An open primary fits and serves today's electorate. Proposition 133, the MAGA Legislature's competing measure, is either meaningless or pernicious. Proposition 140 has several suboptimal provisions, to put it charitably. In fidelity to readers, these will be identified and fully discussed.
However, Prop 140 would do one very big, and very important, thing: Replace Arizona’s system of partisan primaries with open primaries in which all candidates and voters are treated the same.
Over time, I’ve become thoroughly convinced that the partisan primary system is an irredeemable obstacle to good governance that reflects democratic preferences and productive political discourse, particularly here in Arizona.
Arizona is not really a purple state. Arizona is a state that has recently had purple results, but exclusively because Republicans who would win statewide elections can’t win a Republican primary.
In 2014, Republicans won all statewide elections and held all offices elected statewide, federal and state. Today, people who were elected as Democrats (Krysten Sinema subsequently became an independent) hold both U.S. Senate seats. And in 2022, Democrats won the three most important state offices: governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
The political demography of Arizona hasn’t changed markedly in the interim. If anything, it has become more favorable to GOP prospects. In 2014, independents outnumbered Republicans in registration. In 2022, Republicans had a slight edge over independents in registration, and maintained a healthy advantage over Democrats.
What has changed is the Trumpification of the Arizona Republican Party. The political center of gravity in Arizona continues to be pragmatic conservatism. If the GOP was still fielding candidates such as John McCain, Jon Kyl and Doug Ducey, Republicans would still be dominating state politics. A Democratic victory would still be considered an unusual occurrence. If Nikki Haley were the GOP nominee for president, Arizona wouldn’t be a swing state in the 2024 presidential race. The inability of MAGA candidates to win elections that should be a GOP cakewalk is seeping down-ballot.
The reality is that a pragmatic conservative, representing the political center of gravity in Arizona, has no realistic way to make it to the general election ballot in today’s partisan primary system. With an open primary system, there would be a path for such candidates.
That’s why the opposition to Prop 140 by some conservative groups, such as the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, is, tactically, so short-sighted. The current system, and the Trumpification of the Arizona GOP, is what is enabling Democrats to vastly overperform in general elections. For a conservative who can win a statewide election to make it to the general requires junking a partisan primary system in which MAGA voters, who are perhaps 15% of the overall electorate, control half the access.
Now, if there was some hope that, post-Trump, the Arizona GOP would return to Reaganite principles and once again become a party in which the McCains, Kyls and Duceys could win contested primaries, there might be a tactical argument for conservatives to wait it out. However, there’s no basis to believe that such a reincarnation is likely or even faintly possible. For the foreseeable future, the Arizona GOP will be a populist nationalist party with a nasty streak that repels general election swing voters.
Of course, tactical considerations for conservatives isn’t the principal, or most important, argument for an open primary. The existing partisan primary system simply doesn’t fit or serve today’s Arizona electorate.
A third of Arizona voters are opting not to join a political party. The partisan primary system treats them unequally and unfairly. To participate in choosing the general election nominees, they have to choose a ballot for a political party they have declined to join. And they can only choose among candidates who are running as a partisan. Independent candidates face large hurdles to make their way to the general election ballot.
In an open primary, all candidates run in the same primary, irrespective of party affiliation or lack thereof. All candidates face the same requirements to gain access to the primary ballot. All voters participate in the same primary election.
That’s the reform that Arizona badly needs. From there, however, Prop 140 sort of falls apart.
In the first place, Prop. 140 doesn’t create a fully nonpartisan system. The ballot measure assumes that the state still certifies political parties.
Prop. 140 leaves open the possibility of there being party labels on the primary ballot, albeit with a disclosure that the label doesn’t mean or imply an endorsement by the party. While I support strongly reducing, indeed extinguishing, the formal role of parties in our electoral system, candidates shouldn’t be able to use a party brand without the party having a say on which candidates get that privilege.
Prop 140 also permits taxpayer-financed partisan presidential primary elections, provided the party allows registered independents to participate. Currently, independents can participate in state taxpayer-financed primaries, except for the presidential ones.
If partisan primaries are abolished, there is no reason for the state to continue to provide official recognition and certification of political parties. There are states where people just register to vote and voters aren’t officially classified by party affiliation. Political parties should be private organizations without any official role, recognition, or certification.
The largest deficiency, substantively and politically, is the failure of Prop 140 to specify what happens in the general election. Open primary supporters are divided over whether the top two vote-getters in the primary should move on to the general, or whether more than two should move on and the general election be determined by ranked-choice voting.
The way ranked-choice voting usually is conducted is that voters rank all candidates in order of preference. If no candidate obtains a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate who received the fewest first-preference votes is dropped and that candidate’s first-preference votes are reallocated to those voters’s second choice. The process is continued until a candidate gets to a majority of votes as they have been reallocated.
I’m an ardent supporter of the top-two option and a critic of ranked-choice voting, particularly in Arizona, for reasons articulated in a previous column.
Rather than decide between top-two and ranked-choice, Prop 140 punts on the question, leaving both options open. The Legislature gets the first shot at making the decision, and if it fails to act timely, the decision devolves to the secretary of state.
Substantively, dodging such a fundamental question about our election system makes this just a half-baked proposal. Politically, I think it is likely to be a bigger problem than the Prop. 140 proponents seem to think.
The proponents want the electorate to focus on the open primary part of the initiative. However, the instinct of most voters is that the more important election is the general election, in which the final selection of an officeholder takes place. An argument can be made that, often, the primary election is actually the more important, but that’s contrary to the sense voters have of things.
Not having an answer to how the final decision will be made, and bucking that to a distrusted Legislature or a single elected official, will be, I suspect, a hard sell.
Having said that, the benefits of an open primary system in providing a pathway to the general election ballot for pragmatists is worth the shot in the dark regarding how the general election will be conducted. Ranked-choice voting in the general election would be a high price to pay for an open primary, but one worth paying nevertheless.
MAGA legislators have referred a competing ballot measure, Proposition 133, which they claim would constitutionally prohibit ranked-choice voting. However, it would do no such thing. Crafting policy isn’t a big MAGA skill set.
The measure would guarantee that partisan primaries take place and that the nominees of recognized parties would be on the general election ballot. However, nothing about that prevents future legislation, or a statutory initiative, from making it easier for non-party candidates to also be placed on the general election ballot, and for the winner to be determined by ranked-choice voting.
The primary effect of Prop. 133 would be to preclude an open primary from being adopted by legislation or statutory initiative. However, any open primary proposal is likely to be in the form of a constitutional initiative, which is what Prop. 140 is. If Prop. 133 succeeds and Prop. 140 fails, any subsequent attempt at adopting an open primary could take the form of a constitutional amendment that supersedes Prop. 133.
So, with respect to an open primary or ranked-choice voting, Prop. 133 is basically meaningless. There is one potentially pernicious effect, however.
MAGA legislators twice passed a bill forbidding the use of ranked-choice voting by cities. Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed both bills.
There is a question about the legislative authority to enact such a ban against charter cities. The courts have been inconsistent and unclear about the extent to which the Legislature can dictate to charter cities about election matters.
Prop 133 would, in the state Constitution, say that charter cities are subject to legislative enactments dealing with direct primaries, meaning primary elections decided by the vote of the people rather than through party conventions or some similar mechanism. Again, policymaking not being a MAGA skill set, it is unclear that this language would preclude a charter city from deciding how many candidates pass to the general election or adopting ranked-choice voting to determine the general election winner. However, the language raises the question of whether the Legislature could require cities, almost all of which have nonpartisan elections, to instead conduct partisan primaries.
Paradoxically, the one charter city that has partisan primaries, Tucson, would see its system outlawed if Prop 140 passes.
Despite the rearguard action of MAGA legislators, an open primary is in Arizona’s future. It fits and serves today’s electorate and the partisan primary system does not. That will only be increasingly true over time. At some point, the broader electorate will rebel at having its general election choices dictated and circumscribed by unrepresentative partisan primary voters.
If Prop 140 passes, it will be messy as the general election mechanisms get sorted out. But the big and vital first step, providing a path to the general election ballot for pragmatists, will have been taken. The time is past ripe for that step in Arizona.
