There will be a host of ballot measures for you to weigh when you head to the polls in November — adding to an already long ballot. And, as the legislative session has wrapped up and we’ve gotten a clearer picture of just how many measures there might be, the lawsuits against them are also racking up.
Camryn Sanchez with KJZZ’s Politics Desk sat down with The Show to talk about a few of them.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Cameron.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.
GILGER: OK. So start with an overview for us here. How many ballot measures might we potentially see as we head toward November?
SANCHEZ: A lot but the short answer is we don't know yet. So the Legislature has referred several, I believe it's 11.But there's also the Citizen led initiatives and the signatures that are due for those are due on July 3. So that's when, you know, we'll start to figure out who qualified to get their effort onto the ballot. And then it could be quite a few, but I don't want to speculate too much. And in, in response to that, you know, the counties are preparing to have very long ballots,
GILGER: Very long ballots, many pages potentially. Why so many, like this has to do with the balance of power, right, with the GOP-led Legislature kind of trying to go around a Democratic governor.
SANCHEZ: That is definitely true. So Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is dealing with a Republican-controlled Legislature who before Hobbs had a Republican governor. So with Hobbs, you know, she vetoed a lot of their efforts over the past two sessions and to get around that they can put up a measure that's passed on party lines and send it to the voters rather than to the governor straight to voter approval. So it's a good way to get around that.
Another reason is just that this is going to be a big election year with the presidential election. You know, there's expected to be pretty good turnout and there's just a lot going on. So it's going to be a big ballot.
GILGER: OK. So let's talk about a few of these measures. I want to start with two measures that are both about the same thing about tipped workers’ minimum wage. One was put on the ballot by Republican lawmakers, as you described. The other is a citizen-led initiative that has been collecting signatures. Tell us about these two competing kind of measures.
SANCHEZ: Right. So the tipped workers measure is the one from Republicans and it says that an employer can pay their employees 25% less than the minimum wage if, with tips included, they'd be making about $2 more than the minimum wage. And the challenge is coming from a group who is trying to raise the minimum wage by a few dollars.
And they're saying that this is a deceptive title, the Tipped Workers Protection Act, it’s misleading, that it's going to be a decoy measure to try to draw votes away from their minimum wage increase measure that they're trying to get on the ballot and that it's intentionally done to trick voters and short change tipped workers, especially restaurant workers like waiters.
GILGER: What does the restaurant industry think about this? Which one are they backing?
SANCHEZ: Well, the Republican measure is backed by the restaurant association and also the beverage association.
GILGER: OK. So the backers of one of these is suing the other. Is this gonna potentially confuse voters if both of these end up on the ballot? They seem the same but do different things.
SANCHEZ: Very different things. And yes, it could be potentially confusing. They're hoping the group that is suing is hoping that the judge is going to just throw the Republican measure off the ballot completely, but there's not really a precedent for that. So we'll see.
GILGER: We'll see. OK, let's move on to another ballot measure that's drawing a lot of debate. This is the Judicial Accountability Act of 2024. What would this do?
SANCHEZ: This would, according to the opponents of it, allow lifelong terms for judges — basically no term limits anymore because as it is now, judges can serve for six years and then they have to go to the ballot and voters can choose to retain them or to kick them off.
GILGER: Right. We always see that long list of judges on the ballot that you can say yes or no to yes.
SANCHEZ: But this measure which is also so championed by legislative Republicans called the Judicial Accountability Act, I believe, which is going to the ballot. And it would not put that question to the voters anymore. So judicial retention wouldn't be that kind of issue. It would be a merit-based system. So judges would be able to serve indefinitely on basically good behavior.
GILGER: So there's also a lawsuit over this one. Now, what are they saying?
SANCHEZ: It's actually the same attorney. He's kind of making a similar argument he's saying, calling it the Judicial Accountability Act is going to confuse people because in reality, it's taking away voters’ right to have judicial accountability. And that's a voter protected thing and it's giving that power away and voters would never support it if it was called something else, but it's supposed to be intentionally deceptive.
GILGER: Yeah. OK. There's another big one here: immigration. HCR 2060, which Republican lawmakers sent to the ballot after the governor vetoed something similar earlier in the session. This would give local police the authority to enforce immigration law. It's been likened to SB 1070. There has been a lot of coverage of this. This is also facing legal challenges. Tell us about those.
SANCHEZ: Well, so far, the legal challenge against that one is by groups who I pose every part of it. But they're saying that the reason it should be kept off the ballot is because it violates the single subject rule, which basically says that a measure can only address a single subject of the law. And this one kind of does a lot of different things. It involves fentanyl, for example, and money distribution. And it also, of course, is about border security and public safety. And they're saying, "It's too many things crammed into one measure. That's not legal. It shouldn't be allowed to go to the ballot like that."
GILGER: So let me ask you before I let you go, how successful challenges like these have been in the past? How likely is it, you think, that we'll see some of these measures actually make to the ballot?
SANCHEZ: I think it's pretty likely that we'll see some of these measures make it to the ballot.
GILGER: And is it harder to get them kicked off?
SANCHEZ: The deception argument that they're making hasn't really been successful. The attorney cited some cases in the past where a judge has considered that, but a judge has never said, "OK, this title is deceptive, therefore, it shouldn't be on the ballot." So this would be, that's a hurdle.
GILGER: What about when it comes to the single subject rule?
SANCHEZ: I think that one has a good chance because judges have actually ruled recently that the Legislature has violated the single subject rule. So there's a precedent for that one.
GILGER: It's going to be a very long ballot as we referenced. How does that change things? Does it change things for voters, for the way people run campaigns,for the messaging around the election?
SANCHEZ: Well, there's concern about what's called ballot fatigue, which is that if a voter gets to a ballot and there's that much stuff on it, they're just gonna stop voting at some point. They'll vote for a few offices and then they'll just turn in a ballot that's blank for the rest of it. The other concern is that it's expensive to have these longer ballots. You have to have an extra page, and for Election Day, it's gonna mean maybe some longer lines.
GILGER: Right. Because we're already concerned about how long it takes to count votes, right? This makes that harder, I'm guessing.
SANCHEZ: That's what the county says, yes.
GILGER: All right. We'll leave it there for now. Lots to watch for on all of these stories. Camryn Sanchez with KJZZ’s politics desk joining us. Camryn, thanks as always. Appreciate it.
SANCHEZ: Thank you.
