Arizona Proposition 140: Debate on eliminating partisan primaries

Arizona Proposition 140 would eliminate partisan primaries and replace them with an electoral system where individuals may vote for the candidate of their choice regardless of the party affiliation of the voter or the candidate. Also, candidates gathering signatures to qualify for the ballots can also gather from any qualified voters, regardless of political affiliations, and the signature requirements will be the same for all candidates.

Former Arizona Attorney General and former Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard joined “Arizona Horizon” to debate the proposition in support of it with former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andy Gould joining in opposition.

“I think the overwhelming logic says that an open primary that is open to all voters, open to all candidates, makes so much sense,” Goddard said. “Because then anybody running to get nominated is going to have to appeal to a general audience, not just the small group of very partisan people.”

Those opposing the ballot measure submitted a challenge that made it all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court. This occurred after the proposition was already on the ballot. Ballots sent to the printer on August 23 were printed before the challenge made it’s way up the ladder.

“Embedded within this entire prop is a ranked-choice voting system,” Gould said. “What you have in ranked-choice voting is a bizarre ballot that is confusing to voters. It lists seven, eight or ten candidates at a time, and voters have to rank each one of those.”

The challenge was made due to the opposition of the measure believing that duplicate signatures were made in order to reach the threshold of signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot.

On October 4, with weeks until the November election, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled to dismiss the challenge, allowing the measure to stay on the ballot and for votes to count on the issue.