Which Way, Arizona?

This November, voters in six states and DC will decide whether to enact ranked-choice voting, while voters in two states will decide whether to ban it. Ten states have banned RCV since 2022, and if the trend continues, Arizona and Missouri will follow suit in a few weeks. Trying to buck this trend, advocates for the system poured millions of dollars into getting pro-RCV measures on the ballot as a sort of Hail Mary pass to save their broken election scheme. 

In a strange turn of events, Arizona falls into both categories. Voters there will decide on two ranked-choice voting propositions. Prop 140 would enshrine nonpartisan, all-candidate primaries and RCV in the state constitution, whereas Prop 133 would prohibit nonpartisan primaries and effectively ban RCV.

This is the first time that two dueling RCV initiatives have faced off at the ballot box. However, this probably shouldn’t be the case. For starters, 37,657 of the signatures collected for Prop 140 were challenged in court—enough to make the difference on whether it gets on the ballot or not. The court found that 99% of the challenged signatures were duplicates. In the end, a few thousand signatures were removed from consideration, a far cry from the over 37,000 that were determined to be duplicates.

In September, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that Prop 140 could proceed despite the identical signatures, arguing that ballots had already been printed and that the court lacked the legal authority to stop the measure this late in the process. Earlier this month, the Arizona Supreme Court reaffirmed its September ruling, keeping Prop 140 on the ballot.

Polling hasn’t exactly been positive for the pro-RCV measure. Arizonans understand the difficulties associated with implementing such a convoluted system. Voters there seem likely to protect their state from a system associated with weeks-long delays, ballot elimination, and voter confusion.