A handful of Green Party candidates who ran as write-ins in the primary election will advance to the general election after a “clerical error” initially kept them off of the November ballot.
The initial election canvass signed by Secretary of State Adrian Fontes did not show the Green write-in candidates advancing to the November general election even though they received the most votes. That includes U.S. Senate candidate Eduardo Quintana, who defeated two challengers whose names did appear on the primary ballot.
Fontes issued a revised canvass on Friday correcting the error. It shows that Quintana and seven other Green Party write-in candidates won their races, including:
- Vincent Beck-Jones, a candidate in Congressional District 4
- Athena Eastwood, a candidate in Congressional District 6
- Tre Rook, an Arizona House candidate in Legislative District 8
- Cody Hannah, an Arizona House candidate in Legislative District 13
- Scott Menor, an Arizona House candidate in Legislative District 14
- Mike Cease and Nina Luxenberg, candidates for Arizona Corporation Commission
In a statement over the weekend, the Secretary of State’s Office blamed the issue on a “clerical error” with its election management system.
“Our Election Management System (EMS) doesn’t distinguish between a ‘new party’ and an ‘existing party’,” Election Director Lisa Marra said in the statement. “Once we verified that there was in fact an error, we worked diligently to correct the record for the candidates, voters, and the party.”
At issue was a state law governing how write-in candidates advance to the general election.
Under the law, write-in candidates for established parties like the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties must meet specific vote thresholds to move on to the general election. For example, write-in candidates for U.S. Senate must earn 1,288 votes, the same as the number of signatures required to qualify as a candidate on the primary ballot.
But write-ins from newly recognized parties – the Arizona Green Party qualified as an official party in Arizona in December – do not need to reach that threshold and only need to receive the most votes in the primary to advance, according to the law.
Hannah, the legislative candidate and Arizona Green Party co-chair, said the party anticipated facing problems qualifying for the general election and contacted the Secretary of State’s Office after the initial canvass was released. He said the Secretary of State’s Office was quick to correct the issue.
“We were a little surprised that that was an issue in the election management system, but, altogether, we just kind of are hoping that going forward there's some way for them to work that statute into their system so that we're not getting incorrect results like this,” Hannah said.
Hannah said that he was well aware of the law and the exception for new parties is the reason the Greens chose to run write-in candidates instead of spending their limited resources to collect signatures to put their candidates on the primary ballot.
“We're not a super well-funded party. We're not a really big party…considering the context of where we are now as a party, this made the most sense strategy-wise,” he said, noting that could change in the future if the Greens qualify for ongoing representation.
The Arizona Green Party’s candidates will face an uphill battle in November as its members account for less than 0.1% of the total electorate. But the candidates could factor into close statewide races like U.S. Senate by siphoning votes away from the major party candidates.
A poll commissioned by the conservative Club For Growth showed Democrat Ruben Gallego leading Republican Kari Lake 48% to 46%, with the Green Party candidate pulling in 3%. However, that poll erroneously named Mike Norton, who was listed as the Green Party primary winner before the secretary of state issued the revised canvass, as the Green Party candidate.
