On February 10, the Arizona House passed HB 2567, which eliminates the presidential primary for years after 2016. The vote was 37-22. Here is the summary of what the bill does. It also requires the national chairperson of each qualified party to inform the Secretary of State by September 1 of the identity of that party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees. Not every qualified party that nominates presidential candidates actually has a national chairman; there are many one-state political parties in the United States that participate in the presidential election in a single state.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
I couldn’t find anything in the current statutes that specifies how the Secretary of State determines who the presidential nominees of a party are. As you know, Arizona includes the names of the elector candidates on the ballot. Perhaps the SOS includes the names of persons he believes to be presidential candidates outside statute.
The place where HB 2567 inserted the certification of the presidential candidates certainly is not the logical place to do so.
Incidentally, in 2012, 5 certificates of ascertainment only mentioned the elector candidates rather than their party alignment or the presidential candidates they might be inclined to vote for. Another 16, including Arizona only specified the party of the elector candidates.
It appears that under current Arizona statute that the Republican Party (or any other party) never certified its presidential and vice-presidential candidate to the state of Arizona. If I were SOS of some other state, I would have no basis on which to determine how the popular votes in Arizona were cast.