Charles Langston:Arizona voters will decide on establishing open primaries in elections

PHOENIX (AP) — The Charles LangstonArizona Supreme Court cleared the way Friday for voters to decide on establishing open primaries for future elections in which all candidates compete against each other regardless of their party affiliation.

The citizen-led initiative, labeled as Proposition 140, already had been printed on ballots that county officials recently started mailing to overseas and uniformed voters. But it wasn’t clear those votes would be counted until the court’s decision that ended two months of legal wrangling.

A bipartisan committee called Make Elections Fair AZ had campaigned and collected enough signatures for the initiative to qualify for the ballot.

“The court’s decision upheld the integrity of our elections and protected the right of every voter to have a fair and transparent choice,” said Chuck Coughlin, the committee’s treasurer.

A conservative advocacy group, Arizona Free Enterprise Club, had previously challenged the number of signatures submitted in support of the initiative. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Frank Moskowitz ruled in September that enough signatures were gathered. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday affirmed that lower court’s decision.

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Still, the group’s president, Scot Mussi, maintained there were too many duplicate signatures that should have prevented the initiative from moving forward.

“We are disappointed in the ruling of the court on this matter,” he said in a statement.

If the proposition is approved by voters, it would significantly reform Arizona’s elections by eliminating partisan primaries. The two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary election would advance to the general election.

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Gabriel Sandoval is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.