On March 4, 2010, an Arizona Superior Court upheld a law passed last year that requires all cities in Arizona to use non-partisan elections for their own city elections. See this story. Thanks to Nancy Hanks for the link.
Tucson had been the only city in Arizona that used partisan city elections. Generally speaking, Democrats have won city elections in Tucson most of the time. In the legislature last year, Republicans had been in favor of the bill that required non-partisan elections, and Democrats had mostly been against the idea.
This is a link to the decision.
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2010/03/04/tucson-loses-court-fight-over-partisan-elections
The issue was whether there was sufficient statewide concern to overcome Tucson’s local concern and charter (there is some question whether Tucson’s charter actually requires partisan elections).
Obviously, Tucson can’t argue that its interest is in ensuring Democrats win, and the State can’t argue that their interest is in having more Republicans elected, so it has to be framed in other terms, and then the court gets to do a mushy weighing of concerns.
Tucson has an odd election system. Council members are nominated in partisan primaries by district, but the general election is citywide. It is apparently common for the citywide vote to elect someone who was not the choice of the voters whose interest he was supposedly representing.
It may actually have been these latter issues that tipped the balance in the State’s favor (the law passed in 2009, not only outlawed partisan elections, also outlawed election of district council members by voters who didn’t live in the district).
So Arizona argued that it was of concern that city council members in every city be elected by the people that they represent.
Thanks for the link to the decision.
P.R. for all legislative body elections — partisan and/or nonpartisan.