The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a
ballot proposition to end partisan primaries will be allowed to appear
on the November ballot, though the initiative is still facing another
legal challenge to its place on the ballot that won’t be settled for
several weeks.

If voters approve Proposition 140 in
November, they would amend the Arizona Constitution to create an open
primary system where all candidates for federal, state and local offices
would face off in a single primary election instead of segregated
partisan elections. Those primaries would also include candidates who
are politically unaffiliated.

The proposal, known as the Make
Arizona Elections Fair Act, would allow all registered voters to choose
from all the candidates in the primary, and the top vote-getters would
advance to the general election, even if they don’t represent different
parties.

The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday
rejected lawsuits brought by the state Democratic and Republican
parties alleging that the ballot measure unconstitutionally did too many
things, violating a requirement that changes to the constitution
contain only a single amendment. In doing so, it upheld a lower court’s decision.

“[T]he provisions of the Act are
topically related, sufficiently interrelated, involve matters that have
historically been treated as one subject and are qualitatively similar
in their effect on the law, even if the changes concern more than one
section of Article 7 of the Arizona Constitution,” the unanimous ruling
said. “As the superior court noted, touching on more than one section of
the constitution is not necessarily fatal.”

That clears Prop. 140 for the ballot on constitutional grounds. But
earlier on Thursday, the Supreme Court sent a lawsuit challenging the
signatures back to the trial court, which had previously ruled the
initiative exceeded the minimum number required to appear on the ballot.

At issue now for the trial court will
be determining whether some 40,000 signatures that were already deemed
valid are in fact duplicates, which would jeopardize the measure’s place
on the November ballot.

“We are so grateful to the Arizona
Supreme Court for allowing the evidence of 40,000 duplicate signatures
to be reviewed by the lower court,” said Arizona Republican Party
Chairwoman Gina Swoboda. “This petition does not have enough signatures
to qualify to appear on our ballot… We are hopeful the lower court will
find the measure has not met the required threshold in its review.”

But Chuck Coughlin, a spokesman for
the Prop. 140 campaign, said the Supreme Court order merely ordered the
trial court to consider the evidence of the duplicate signatures.

“The trial court ruled today and
previously that that exhibit did not prove what they claimed it proved.
They failed to meet the burden of proof,” he said.

After an emergency hearing today, that case won’t resume until Sept. 3.

That will be after the deadline to
print ballots so they can be mailed to overseas voters. And Coughlin
said “there is no evidence in front of the Supreme Court today that
would permit them to say we did not meet our minimum number of signature
requirements,” so Prop. 140 would appear on ballots in November.

Maricopa County has contended that
ballots need to be finalized by Aug. 22 in order for ballots to be able
to begin being printed in time for the November election. A spokesperson
for the county said its ballots will include Prop. 140.

The Arizona Mirror reached out to the
Arizona Secretary of State’s Office to get clarification but did not
get a response by time of publication.