On April 20, an Arizona State Court of Appeals reversed the lower court and ruled that if Tucson desires partisan elections for itself, it may have them. In 2009 the legislature had passed a law requiring all cities in the state to use non-partisan elections for city office, but the Court of Appeals ruled that the 2009 law violates the State Constitution. Here is the 24-page opinion, which is City of Tucson v State of Arizona, 2ca-cv2010-0083. The vote was 2-1.
The voters of Tucson had voted in favor of partisan city elections several years ago. No other city in Arizona uses partisan city elections. Generally, Democrats win Tucson elections for city office. UPDATE: this article in the Tucson Sentinel says the losing side is likely to appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.
How many lunatic States permit local regimes to be independent semi-nation state regimes — in elections or ANY thing else ???
Asking for major trouble — and getting it of course.
It’s really not something that Tucson can win in the long run. The issue before the court was whether the legislature had identified a statewide interest. The dissenting judge said that they had, while the majority said the legislature had not identified that interest when enacting the statute. So the legislature can simply enact the statute again, explicitly identifying that statewide interest when they do so.
I would think that it would be a statewide interest that city officials are elected by the persons they represent. Tucson’s scheme violates that in two ways, it nominates by ward, but elects at large, so voters in a ward can have their representative imposed by outsiders. And by using partisan primaries, the candidates are chosen by subsets of the voters.
Arizona could also forbid Tucson from using its partisan registration. If Tucson wants to impose partisan segregation of voters they can maintain their own partisan registry. When the county provides its voter rolls to the city, it could redact any partisan notation.