On January 21, proponents of a top-two system for Arizona filed the text of their initiative. It is almost identical to the proposal submitted by the same people in 2012, which was defeated 662,366 to 1,340,286. However, it does say that if only one or two candidates file for the August primary (for an office that elects one person), the August primary will omit that office from the ballot, and the first vote for that office will be in November. It allows write-in votes in both August and November.
Earlier press reports had said the proponents would delete party labels from the primary and general election ballots, but the text does not eliminate party labels. The text says that the party label printed on the ballots must match the partisan registration of the candidate. The text does not make it clear whether that includes labels which are not the names of qualified parties. Anyone is free to register into any group on Arizona voter registration forms, on the blank line for “party.” If the proponents wished to allow any partisan label without restriction, it seems they would have set a limit on how long that label can be, as Washington state does.
The proposal makes no changes to the presidential primary or the presidential general election. The summary of the initiative implies that under current law, some voters are not able to vote in some primaries. Actually, existing law already guarantees that independents can vote in any partisan primary other than the presidential primary. Anyone who reads the summary would probably be led to believe that if the initiative passed, independents could vote in Arizona presidential primaries, but that would not be true.
The top 2 DISEASE continues to infect brains.
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NO primaries, caucuses and conventions.
Equal nominating petitions.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
In Section 10.C it says that all political parties must be treated equally regardless … of recognition … “recognition” only makes sense when applied to political parties, and not voters. 16-801 uses the term “recognition” with respect to new parties.
“regardless of recognition” only makes sense with respect to a party being recognized or not recognized. It would be a very strained interpretation to interpret this as being newly recognized or a continuing recognized party.
In addition 10.D says that party affiliation on the ballot must match the party on the voter registration form.
Arizona could conceivably provide for some registration of political parties similar to Florida, and then treat any voter registration with an unknown entity as being unaffiliated.
The constitutional amendment is written in a way that permits nonpartisan elections. It says that if statute permits partisan labels, all voters and parties must be treated the same. Similarly, the write-in provisions are subject to statute. There is nothing in the California constitution that requires that there be no write-in provision on the general election ballot. That was in SB 6.
Arizona currently elects party officials at the primary. The constitution would forbid public expenditures for that purpose, so that (Title 16, Chapter 5) would have to rewritten or largely ignored.
If not much is made of the fact that this effort is second bite at the apple, so to be clear it is okay to submit to voters re-occurring political reform measures; the voters are up to it.
If only such “reform measures” would combine the Top2 idea of eliminating government-funded partisan primaries with Ranked Choice Voting and perhaps a Top3 or Top4 run-off system in November would this even half-way begin to represent “democracy.” As it stands, those with greatest Name Recognition get the Two nominations for November. That means all elections in the future would be dominated by Donald Trump clones and TV actors.