By Caitlin Sievers | AZ Mirror
In the November election, Arizona voters will decide whether to open up the state’s primary elections to include all voters and candidates, or to fortify the status quo with closed, partisan primaries.
In a rare show of bipartisanship during a contentious election season, a diverse group of Republicans and Democrats have gathered behind a campaign to keep the Grand Canyon State’s primary elections partisan. But that’s not necessarily surprising to the proponents of the Make Elections Fair Act.
“The two parties want to hang onto their power,” former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson said during a Sept. 26 Clean Elections Commission debate about Propositions 133 and 140.
The Make Elections Fair Act, or Proposition 140, is a citizen initiative that would amend the state constitution to create open primary elections in which all candidates for an office would appear on the primary election ballot, regardless of political party affiliation or non-affiliation. All voters, regardless of their own party affiliation, would then vote for any candidate or candidates.
Proponents of Prop.140 say that it makes the election process more equitable for independent candidates and voters and aims to fix the issue of extreme divisiveness in politics by forcing candidates to attempt to hear from and appeal to voters outside of their party.
