From the AZ Mirror:

A judge ordered lawmakers to rewrite the description of a ballot proposition to end partisan primaries in Arizona after ruling the summary was misleading.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian ruled Monday that a legislative panel responsible for writing summaries of ballot measures that are sent to every Arizona voter wrote a misleading description of Proposition 140, a citizen initiative also known as the Make Elections Fair Act. 

If voters approve it in November, the measure would create an open primary system where all candidates for federal, state and local offices would face off in a single primary election instead of segregated partisan elections. Those primaries would also include candidates who are politically unaffiliated. 

All registered voters would be able to choose from all the candidates in the primary, and the top vote-getters would advance to the general election, even if they don’t represent different parties. 

Make Elections Fair Arizona, the political committee that gathered signatures to get Prop. 140 on the ballot, filed a lawsuit contending that the Legislative Council’s description of the measure unfairly focuses attention on the possibility for ranked-choice voting, which it argued would make the measure less popular.

The judge agreed. 

“In doing so, the analysis misleadingly suggests that, if the Initiative is enacted, the candidate who receives the most votes would no longer be declared the victor in ‘all’ Arizona elections,” Julian wrote. “Contrary to the analysis’s implication, the Initiative does not require the use of voter ranking in declaring an election winner in all instances.” 

Prop. 140 was written to allow for ranked-choice voting, but only if the legislature, Secretary of State or voters allow for more than two candidates to advance from the primary to the general election. Julian found that the legislature’s description does not supply the proper context on voter ranking and renders the description misleading.  

“The Court finds that that this is a ‘rhetorical strategy’ devised to dissuade voters from supporting the Initiative by confusing when and how voter ranking would be used under the Initiative and implying that it would result in the unfair election of candidates who did not receive the highest number of the votes,” the judge ruled. “Such a strategy is ‘tinged with partisan coloring’ and violates the requirement of neutrality.” 

The political action committee behind the ballot initiative sued legislators in July after they approved the language unanimously.