By Howard Fischer
Mail | X: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — Arizonans who don’t like the current partisan system of nominating candidates for office could have two similar but somewhat different alternatives from which to choose in 2024.

And that runs the risk of voter confusion and the possibility that neither will get approved.

A group called Better Ballot Arizona has filed paperwork to put a measure on the ballot to have all candidates from all parties run in a single primary election. Then the top five would advance to the general election, regardless of political affiliation, with the ultimate winner decided through a process of ranked-choice voting.
If all that sounds familiar, it should.

Another organization called Make Elections Fair, which filed its own petitions last month for a nonpartisan primary, is going to start gathering signatures in November for its own constitutional amendment.

But there’s a crucial difference: Make Elections Fair would leave how to run the general election up to the Legislature.

Lawmakers would be free to decide that as few as the top two vote-getters go on to run against each other, with whoever gets more votes getting elected. But the Legislature also could allow up to five — like the Better Ballot Arizona plan — also using ranked-choice voting.

Casmiro Fernandes who is managing the Better Ballot campaign, said that’s not acceptable.

“We should just enact it and not leave it to the Legislature to play with or game,” he said of ranked-choice voting.

Fernandes pointed out Republicans at the Capitol, who have maintained their majority under the current system where only the top two candidates advance to the general election, have been hostile to the whole concept of ranked-choice voting. In fact, they already voted to put their own measure on the 2024 ballot, one that would constitutionally preempt any effort to change primary election laws to advance more than one person per political party to the general election.

“The incentive is there to play with it, make it a political tool,” Fernandes said. It even would allow lawmakers to change the system every two years.

Under Arizona law, if both open-primary proposals are approved — and if they gather more votes than the legislative plan to ban ranked-choice voting — the one that gets more votes take effect.

But it also raises the possibility of having two similar yet competing measures on the ballot would confuse voters enough so neither got a majority.

“That’s not going to happen,” said political consultant Chuck Coughlin, who is running the Make Elections Fair campaign. He said the other group lacks the funds to get the 383,923 valid signatures on petitions by July 3 to qualify for a place on the ballot.

Given the normal rate of signature disqualifications, Coughlin said that really means getting support from 500,000. And that has a price tag he has predicted will cost “upwards of $6.5 million.”

But Fernandes said his group, a sister organization to Voter Choice Arizona, has a bigger network of volunteers. More to the point, he said volunteers have a much better validity rate of their signatures than paid circulators.

So he figures the goal can be reached with anywhere from $3 million to $5 million.

And Fernandes said his organization already has promises of contributions from both local and out-of-state donors.

At one point his group and Voter Choice Arizona, which is behind Better Ballot Arizona, actually were working with the supporters of Make Elections Fair, as both support the idea of open primaries.

The idea is that the current system pretty much allows only those registered with a party to choose who are the nominees. And that can often result in the choice of someone who appeals to each party’s hard-line adherents.

But most legislative and congressional districts are drawn in ways in which one party has a definite registration advantage. That means whoever is that party’s nominee is virtually assured of winning, a system critics say result in the election of those with more fringe views who then don’t want to work in a bipartisan fashion.

An open primary has everyone from every party — and those who are unaffiliated — run on a single ballot. It also would eliminate the existing requirement for independent candidates to get more signatures to qualify than partisan contenders.
On that point, both agree.

The sticking point — and what’s behind the schism — is what would happen in the general election.

Under the system in the Better Ballot Arizona plan, voters would rank their choices of the survivors of the primary from one through five.

If any of the candidates gets at least 50% of the vote, then the election is over. If not, the candidate at the bottom drops off and the ballots of those who chose that person as their first choice will then be counted for their second choice.

And if that still doesn’t produce a winner, the process repeats until there are only two left.

“All of our research has shown that that can’t pass,” Coughlin said. That is why his group has bumped the decision to state lawmakers.

They could decide that only the top two vote-getters in the primary advanced to a more traditional election.

Yet even the Make Elections Fair proposal says if lawmakers do not opt for a top-two general election and instead allow for more candidates, its plan also requires the use of ranked-choice voting. Coughlin said making that a legislative option polls better than a mandate.

There are a couple of other differences between the plans.

Make Elections Fair would say that if lawmakers can’t agree on how to structure the general election, the final decision is left to the secretary of state. And if the Make Elections Fair plan is chosen by voters in 2024, that would be Democrat Adrian Fontes.

It also would say the state cannot fund the quadrennial presidential preference election unless all voters of all parties get to participate. But parties would remain free to run their own operations, with their own funds.