On Friday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that votes cast for a pro-ranked-choice voting constitutional amendment in the 2024 election will count — even though nearly 38,000 signatures supporting the amendment proposal were duplicates.
In its decision, the Grand Canyon State’s high court rejected a challenge seeking to have votes cast for Proposition 140 voided after a lower court special master disclosed that 37,657 pairs of signatures gathered in support of the measure were duplicates. As previously argued by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AZFEC), the finding “place[s] Proposition 140 thousands of signatures under the constitutionally required signature threshold to qualify for the [November] ballot.”
Prop 140 would amend the Arizona Constitution by implementing an open primary system in which candidates of all parties run in the same primary. It also paves the way for the state to potentially adopt ranked-choice voting (RCV) for general elections.
Under an RCV system, voters are asked to rank candidates of all parties in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.
As The Federalist previously reported, the Arizona Supreme Court allowed a signature challenge to Prop 140 filed by several residents to move forward on Aug. 23. The high court stated that if it were determined that enough invalid signatures existed to disqualify the initiative from appearing on the November ballot,
