An Arizona voter carries her ballot to a polling place to vote in the 2018 primary election in Phoenix. /Photo by Ralph Freso | Getty Images
By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
A legal battle over an attempt to remove the mayor of Payson from office may settle an unanswered question about the requirements for forcing a recall election against a municipal official.
State law and the Arizona Constitution dictate that in order to call a recall election against an elected official, organizers must collect signatures equivalent to 25 percent of the total number of votes for that office in the “last preceding general election” for that office. For state and county officials, that number is easy to calculate.
But things can get tricky when it comes to city and town officials, which don’t always have general elections. In nearly every city and town in Arizona, all candidates for a municipal office appear on a nonpartisan ballot, and the top two vote-getters move on to a runoff election. If one candidate gets a majority of all votes, that person is declared the winner and no runoff election is held.
That leaves an open question — how does a city calculate the number of signatures needed for a recall election if it’s been years since the last general election for an office?
An attempted recall campaign against Payson Mayor Tom Morrissey may finally provide an answer.
