There’s more to Arizona ballots than races for elected office.
This fall, the state’s voters will have a say on eight ballot measures — all of them proposals referred to the ballot by legislative Republicans.
From public school spending requirements to speed cameras, some of the ballot measures are ideas that Republican legislators have tried for years to get passed as bills, only to meet defeat at the hands of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’s veto stamp.
Now Republicans can pitch their proposals directly to voters.
Politics Desk editor Ben Giles is joined by political correspondents Camryn Sanchez and Wayne Schutsky for an overview of what each ballot measure would change in Arizona law.
Transcript
BEN GILES: Hello and welcome to Prickly, a podcast from KJZZ's Politics Desk.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Thank you for listening. I'm WAYNE SCHUTSKY.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I'm CAMRYN SANCHEZ.
BEN GILES: And I'm political editor BEN GILES. In our last episode, we told you about the competitive legislative races that will appear on this year's ballot in November, and now we're going to talk about what else is on the ballot, specifically ballot measures. Those are the proposed laws and constitutional amendments that must receive voter approval to go into effect. There are a total of eight ballot measures this year, all sent there by your esteemed state lawmakers. But before we get to those eight proposals, Camryn, there's one ballot measure that is left out. Tell us about the big citizen initiative that voters won't get to have a say on this fall.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, that was the school voucher reform measure, which was backed by Arizona's Public School Teachers Union and Save Our Schools, which is a pro-public school advocacy group. And that measure would have asked voters to add a bunch of reforms and guardrails to the private school voucher program. It's also called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. So that would have included an income cap for recipients and stricter rules on the spending. But voters are not going to get the chance to weigh in on that one because a judge found that the campaign didn't collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. They needed about 256,000, and they collected over 415,000. But there was a signature challenge, and the Arizona Supreme Court and a lower court judge tossed about 170,000 signatures in total after reviews by the Secretary of State and the counties, which take random samples of those signatures to determine a validity rate.
BEN GILES: And Wayne, that's not the only school voucher measure that the courts kicked off the ballot this year.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: That's correct. Our listeners might remember our coverage of what we called a poison pill measure that Republicans passed at the end of the legislative session. This was passed directly to combat that measure that Camryn was talking about. Republicans kind of pitched it as this way to protect voucher dollars from military families. It would have prohibited any law that tried to claw back that money, but it also would have actually invalidated any other voucher reform measure essentially that was passed by the voters, so it was kind of seen as a check – in case voters approve that measure, we've got this one in place that could potentially invalidate it. But, again, the Supreme Court said that that's violated something called the separate amendment rule. That basically means you can't glom a bunch of unrelated measures into one thing and make voters vote on it. And the Supreme Court decided that the military family section of that and then that poison pill that would have invalidated any other voucher reform were too unrelated to go in the same measure.
BEN GILES: Okay, so a month ago, it really looked like a big issue this election could be the school voucher program, the ESA program. Does that change now that both of these pro and anti-voucher measures are off the ballot?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Well, yes and no. I guess I would say they don't get to weigh in on the program directly like we thought they may. But, again, this just shifts kind of that discussion to all of the different races up and down the ballot. We're talking about legislature, governor, state superintendent, because all of those positions have a role in either regulating the program through policy or overseeing the program like the superintendent does, in terms of making sure that it's only allowable expenses that are being used by voucher families.
BEN GILES: Interesting. Okay, let's pivot to what will actually appear on the ballot; all those measures that state lawmakers referred to the ballot. Camryn, let's start with you. Are there any other education-related proposals that voters will get to weigh in on.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: There is one measure, Prop 318, which would ban transgender student athletes from using the bathrooms or locker rooms or other private spaces in schools that don't align with their biological sex. This sort of campaign has been part of the Republican platform for years now, and they say this is about protecting girls in schools. It is also similar to legislation that Gov. Hobbs has vetoed in the past, so this is a way to sort of circumvent her veto stamp. And then, if voters in Arizona do pass this measure, it would sort of cement some of this into state law in a way that would be harder to undo by future legislatures.
BEN GILES: Camryn, can you explain why would it be more difficult to undo in the future?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Basically, in Arizona law, when voters pass something, it has much stronger protections than when the legislature passes something through the normal process of introducing a bill and sending it up to the governor's desk and then having it signed. Those pieces of legislation can typically be altered more easily by future legislatures. They can go and alter legislation or even undo it. But a voter initiative or a constitutional amendment, those can be more cemented into the law and harder to change in the future. And it's designed that way to protect voters' rights.
BEN GILES: Interesting. Okay, and I think you also touched on a trend we're going to see: many of these proposals that were sent to the ballot by the legislature, the legislature of course is controlled by Republican majorities in both chambers, are circumventing Gov. Katie Hobbs's veto stamp. What other school-related proposals are Republicans trying to sneak past Hobbs?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: There is another related proposal called Prop 320, which would essentially force most public school districts to spend more money in the classroom – a bigger percentage of their budget, that is. So this would require 60% of operational spending to go to instructional expenses that includes stuff like teacher pay and classroom supplies. And right now, on average, Arizona schools spend about 52% on those costs. Republicans say that's not enough, and there's too much administrative bloat.
BEN GILES: Okay, but critics say the situation is a bit more complicated than that, right?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yes, the critics say that there are rising costs elsewhere, and Arizona spends actually less than the national average per student on education, so there is not as much money to go around. They also say that those instructional costs don't represent other things that are necessary to schools, like counselors and speech pathologists, etc.
BEN GILES: Okay, so a debate over how schools are spending their budgets as, you know, small as they might be compared to the budgets in other states. So, Camryn, does that wrap up the education measures that we'll see on the ballot?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yes, it does.
BEN GILES: All right, let's move on. Wayne, I want to pivot to election law. There is a proposal from Republican lawmakers on here that could really upend the way Arizonans vote. Tell us more about that.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Proposition 144 is another one of those measures that we talked about that is in a lot of ways circumventing the governor. It includes some aspects of election policy in the past that she has vetoed. It'd make a lot of different changes to election law, but the headline piece is probably this requirement that all voters show an ID to cast a ballot. Now, for people who vote in person, that might not sound all that novel, since that's already required in the state. But it would also require anyone who votes by mail to do the same thing, and it's just not clear how people would actually do that. And critics say that by creating that uncertainty, it's just a way to undermine mail-in voting, because this legislation is backed by a lot of Republicans who have been critical of that in the past.
BEN GILES: So, just so we're clear, there's nothing in this proposal, this legislative ballot referral, from Republican lawmakers that says how voters who vote by mail would show ID?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: No, it just essentially says that everyone who casts a ballot has to show an ID when they do it, and again, that's kind of the point of contention here, is Democrats saying, “you're doing this on purpose? You're muddying the waters intentionally to interrupt mail-in voting.”
BEN GILES: Okay, what else does this proposal do?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Make a couple other different changes to the law. That includes moving up the date to drop off these so-called late early ballots we've talked about before. Those are those mail-in ballots that people end up turning in in person on Election Day that can take longer to count and all that kind of thing. So this would kind of move up the deadline to the Friday before the election to try and speed up the voting process. There's also some rules that have to do with campaign finance and making sure that foreigners cannot contribute to election-related measures. Republicans say that it's also about making sure only citizens can vote because that is mentioned twice explicitly in the law. However, again, critics note that that's already the law. And they believe that that's more of a marketing technique, throwing that in there to try and take something that's very popular but already in the law and to pass all these other measures.
BEN GILES: All right, three down, Camryn. There's still five propositions to get through. Two of those could have pretty significant impacts on Arizona drivers.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, the first one is Prop 319, and that would ask voters to permanently ban photo radar systems, which are used to catch people speeding and running red lights, unless they get voter approval. So the state hasn't been using those on the freeway for many years. But Phoenix brought back speed cameras, and there are some towns like Paradise Valley which have used them for years. So this is about municipalities.
BEN GILES: And just so I'm clear, municipalities could use speed cameras or red light cameras, but they would have to go to voters in a local election to get the authority to do that.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Correct.
BEN GILES: Okay. Well, what else can Arizona drivers expect to see on their ballots this year?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: There's another one. That's Prop 141, which would ban the state from imposing any taxes that are based on the miles a car travels. So those types of vehicle mileage-based taxes are an option that the state could consider to replace or to supplement taxes on fuel, which are used to pay for road and freeway repairs. And the revenue from those taxes have been falling a little as more people use electric vehicles.
BEN GILES: Okay, so for years we've had this fuel tax, which is kind of a fair way, I guess, to determine who pays how much for road maintenance. The more you drive, the more you pay. What is the argument against then for electric vehicles that can bypass the fuel tax entirely? What's the argument against them paying a fair share, so to speak, based on how much they're driving on roads in Arizona?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I think some of the argument is over how we calculate that, since it's a different system that they're using, and also there are some more liberal lawmakers who want to incentivize electric vehicles and say, well, you know, they are doing something that's good for the environment. People are investing in electric cars, so we shouldn't be penalizing them through new separate laws. The sponsor of the ballot measure, State Sen. Jake Hoffman, who also happens to drive an electric Cybertruck, argued that this is a freedom issue and the government doesn't have any business tracking your car's mileage.
BEN GILES: Okay, so no big brother keeping an eye on you and your vehicle. Wayne, there's another anti-tax measure on the ballot, though.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: That's right. Republicans, you know, they love going after taxes. So Prop 316 targets the tax on groceries. It would require cities and towns to get voter approval again to raise grocery taxes, and it would also limit what those increases could be to 2%. So Republicans have long sought to eliminate this tax. Gov. Hobbs again vetoed it back in 2023, and the effect of this legislation, if passed, would really depend on where you live. The biggest cities in the state, like Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, they don't tax groceries already, but there are 60 plus cities across the state that do use it and see it as a key source of revenue, especially after the legislature and Hobbs eliminated the tax on rentals just a few years ago.
BEN GILES: Okay, just two propositions to go: Prop 142 and Prop 317. Camryn, on the surface, these don't seem to be related, but tell what is the through line with these last two ballot measures?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, these are both hot button issues for Republican voters, but they don't actually do that much in practice. So Prop 317 would label drug cartels as terrorist organizations, and then it would direct the State Department of Homeland Security to “do everything in its power to stop them.”
BEN GILES: Okay, but what power do they actually have to fight drug trafficking in this way?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: That's the thing. This is really more political messaging than anything else, because the legislation doesn't really provide any funding for that mission. It doesn't give them any resources. And Governors Hobbs and Ducey before her, they already set up efforts to fight against drug trafficking using the Department of Homeland Security, DPS, the National Guard, coordination with local law enforcement, so we essentially have everything in place that we can do.
BEN GILES: All right, so a measure that sounds like it's a little bit of red meat for the Republican base. What about Prop 142?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Prop 142 is designed to go after so-called DEI policies in state government, and it says it would ban the state from spending any money in a way that discriminates against people as it relates to employment, education, or contracts. But the thing is, that is largely already illegal in state law. This is kind of not adding anything new, and critics say that the discrimination Republicans are saying that they're fighting against is already a non-issue. So, they're basically accusing Republicans of using anti-DEI language to hide other provisions and go after agencies who teach diversity training.
BEN GILES: Okay, those are the eight propositions Arizona voters will see on their ballot this year. Stay tuned as Camryn and Wayne continue to cover campaigns for and against these issue-based votes, as well as the biggest races for state and federal offices this election season.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Prickly Podcast from KJZZ's Politics Desk. Tune in to 91.5 to hear our coverage, or log on to kjzz.org.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: And please subscribe to the Prickly Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
