Republican lawmakers in Arizona placed a slew of constitutional amendments on the ballot this fall to limit the recourse available to voters to hold politicians and courts accountable and to take matters into their own hands. Arizonans on Tuesday rejected those proposals.
They voted down Prop 137, which would have largely ended judicial elections in the state and frozen in place the state supreme court’s current conservative majority. They also rejected Prop 134 and 136, which would have severely limited direct democracy by making it far tougher to qualify a measure for the ballot.
All three measures lost handily, with Prop 137 going down by the largest margin. With some ballots remaining to be counted, it trails 77 to 23 percent as of publication.
Arizonans on the same day approved an initiative to protect abortion in the state, overturning a 15-week ban GOP lawmakers adopted in 2022. This measure was placed on the ballot through a citizen-led effort, precisely the sort of organizing that would have become prohibitively difficult in the future if Prop 134 and 136 had passed.