Arizona HB 2201 has passed two committees in the House. It converts all mayoral and city council races to partisan elections. Currently Tucson is the only city in Arizona with partisan elections.
Republicans on the Election Committee and the Rules Committee voted for the bill; Democrats opposed it. There is some reason to believe that the bill, if signed into law, would violate the Arizona Constitution, at least for charter cities. Some years ago, when the state passed a law requiring all cities to hold non-partisan elections, the city of Tucson won a ruling that charter cities have a right to decide for themselves whether to have partisan or non-partisan elections.
Legis – partisan PR
Exec/Judic – NONpartisan App V
It requires party affiliation to be placed on ballots. It does not require partisan nomination. It also eliminates a provision that permits election in the primary. In effect, it establishes Top 2 for city elections.
It is not clear how the constitutional question will play out. It appears that the legislature can set out the general framework for elections. Otherwise charter cities would have to enact a complete version of the election code. The provision to have a primary is in statute. The provision to elect by a majority in the primary if approved by city ordinance is in statute. While a charter city might do that on its own, there is some indication that they did so after the statute was in place. The wording in charters providing for nonpartisan elections is almost identical to the state statute: “any indication on the ballot of the source of the candidacy or of the support of the candidate”.
So rather than being unconstitutional, it might not be enforceable with respect to a charter city, depending if it has a contrary provision in the charter.
In a hearing, one representative suggested that this was a matter of statewide concern and not a restructuring since they were only requiring information about candidates to be displayed on the ballot. He didn’t say this, but perhaps it might be similar to a requirement for financial disclosure. Previously, the legislature required general-law cities to have even-year elections. They then forced charter cities to comply by saying that the statewide concern was low voter turnout, Phoenix voters approved the switch last August. Oddly, Phoenix had a special mayoral election in November 2018, because the previous mayor had resigned. The runoff for the special election is in March.
Tucson voters turned down a switch to even-year elections this past November. This will probably end up in court after Tucson holds an odd-year election with relatively low turn out.
I suspect that the bill may be in response to the consequences of the the shift to even year elections. There is the bizarre theory that when there a megamillions being spent on presidential and gubernatorial and senatorial elections, that voters will become so enthused that they will research the city council and school board elections.
Instead, they will either skip over the races or vote haphazardly. Then when there is a local controversy, they will ask how this mayor or that city council member was elected, they will be told that it was in August during the primary. Why wasn’t it in November when everyone voted? Well there was amajority in August during the primary. I voted in Republocrat (or Demopublican) primary. I didn’t pay attention to that race (or didn’t even vote). In 2018, twice as many voters voted in the general election as voted in the primary.
It would be better to hold separate city elections, and keep the polls open for days, weeks, months, or years, until a quorum was reached.
The requirement to print party affiliation might run afoul of Gralike, and if Emidio Soltysik wins his case, require Arizona to permit registration in non-qualified parties.
The city of Douglas attempted to adopt the Tucson method, but were blocked by the DOJ. You will recall that Tucson’s method not only involves partisan elections, but nominations are by ward, while the general election is by the entire city. The legislature’s concern is that the citywide electorate would disregard the interests of the ward that nominated the candidates. This is unconstitutional if this results in discrimination against minority voters.
Before the SCOTUS finally made a decision against the use of multi-member districts, they practically begged for a case that demonstrated racial OR political injury. Multi-member districts per se are not unconstitutional, but only when their use prevents a localized minority from equally participating in elections. Once the SCOTUS found a case based on racial discrimination, it seems to have been forgotten that there was also a concern about political discrimination.
Now that there is renewed concern about political gerrymandering (Maryland, North Carolina, and Wisconsin), could a new challenge be mounted in Tucson? If it is unconstitutional to draw district boundaries that reduce the effectiveness of certain voters, can you draw district boundaries and then disregard them completely. The SCOTUS remanded the Wisconsin case to determine if there were injured voters in individual districts. This would be much easier to show if you lived in a Republican-leaning district in Tucson but could not elect your council member of choice.
An irony is that Barry Goldwater first got involved in politics as part of a nonpartisan effort to clean up Phoenix which had a corrupt political machine. Democrats were long dominant in Arizona politics. Carl Hayden was in Congress from the time of creation (of the state) until 1969. Goldwater went on to establish the Republican Party in Arizona. He might not have got a toehold, if forced to run for the city council as a Republican.
SCOTUS is math brain dead about gerrymander math
— due to LOTS of very stupid profs and worse lawyers.
1/2 or less votes x 1/2 rigged gerrymander districts
= 1/4 or less CONTROL = OLIGARCHY —
BLATANT SUBVERSION OF RFG IN 4-4.
—
PR AND APPV