Arizona open primary initiative: Court should end suit because ballots are printed, backers say

Proponents of a ballot initiative to scrap partisan primaries are asking the Arizona Supreme Court to set deadlines for filing legal challenges against propositions.

The request comes after the state Supreme Court ruled challenges can come after ballots start printing.

The group Make Elections Fair, which has backed Proposition 140, argued that legal challenges against ballot measures should only come before ballots start printing.

The court has allowed a legal challenge to continue despite that ballot deadline having passed in August, giving the foes a chance to argue the number of signatures fell short. If it were to succeed, any votes the measure got in November would not be counted.

An attorney for Make Elections Fair says that would disenfranchise voters.

The suit was sent back to a trial judge holding a hearing next week on the measure’s signatures.

Right now, candidates for partisan elections face off in a primary. Then each party's top vote-getters appear on the November ballot.

Prop. 140 would replace that with an open primary where all candidates from all parties compete against each other. And all voters, regardless of party affiliation, can cast a ballot.

It would then allow the top two vote-getters to face off in the general election, regardless of party designation. But it also would permit the Legislature to let up to five candidates advance to the general election, with a system of ranked-choice voting to ultimately decide who wins.

Make Elections Fair submitted about 575,000 signatures. That was winnowed down after checks by state and county election officials to 409,474, still more than the 383,923 needed to qualify for the ballot.

Foes, however, contend about 40,000 of those signatures are duplicates.