New lawsuit aims to knock voucher reform off Arizona's ballot

A lawsuit filed Monday by the Goldwater Institute on behalf of four individuals claims there are not enough valid signatures on initiative petitions to put restraints on the voucher system on the November ballot. 

The burden is on the challengers to prove the numbers come up short.

The initiative, crafted by the Arizona Education Association and Save Our Schools, is designed to reverse much of what lawmakers approved in 2022 when they voted to allow any public school student to get what are called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. That expansion of the voucher program boosted enrollment to more than 100,000, with a price tag of more than $1 million.

It also resulted in multiple news stories about parents using voucher money for items that had no apparent educational purposes.

The initiative seeks to rein these in, with provisions requiring greater screening of requests by parents for reimbursements. It also contains a specific list of items that could not be bought with voucher money.

But the big change — and the one that has garnered the most opposition — would make universal vouchers off limits to children in families with income of more than $150,000 a year.

Backers of the initiative, called the Protect Education Accountability Act, submitted petitions earlier this month they said have more than 421,000 signatures to put the issue to voters. They need 259,949 of those to be found valid.

County election officials will review a random sample against voter records and then extrapolate how many are presumed valid.

But that isn't the last word, with state law allowing anyone to challenge the remaining signatures.

In the new lawsuit, attorney Kory Langhofer says he will produce evidence that, after court review, will show the final valid total falls short.

Most of the challenges are based on failure of petition circulators to follow state law.

For example, Arizona law says anyone who is a paid circulator, or from out of state, must first register with the Secretary of State's Office. 

Langhofer told the judge that many of the petitions already reviewed show that did not occur.

There also are requirements on circulators to provide other information, such as where they can be served with a summons if asked to come to court to defend the signatures they gathered.

Langhofer said he has found petitions circulated by those who were convicted of certain criminal offenses and have not had their civil rights restored.

In each case, if a circulator is found to have been unqualified, then each of the signatures they gathered cannot be counted.

Langhofer said Monday he already has found more than 65,000 signatures that fit that category. He said he expects to add more in the next few days.

No date has been set for a hearing by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David McDowell.

Initiative campaign spokeswoman Olivia Fiero said it was "predictable'' there would be a challenge.

"They're doing this for one reason only: they know it will pass in November,'' she said.

Fiero specifically contended the challenge is being pushed by the American Federation for Children, a national pro-voucher organization headed by former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Fiero called it an organization "aimed at leaving Arizona's ESA program simply as it is, plagued by waste, fraud and abuse.''

No one from the Goldwater Institute would confirm or deny the involvement of the American Federation for Children, instead releasing its own statement of why a challenge is being mounted to the initiative.

"This is a shameless attack on Arizona's parents, funded by an out-of-state union,'' said Victor Riches, the president and CEO of the Goldwater Institute, in a written statement.

The reference to an out-of-state union stems from the fact that the campaign committee pushing the initiative reports that more than $6.5 million of the $7.5 million collected came from the National Education Association.

"They're trying to game the system by turning in tens of thousands of invalid signatures in an effort to destroy the most successful school choice program in the country,'' Riches said. "This won't happen on our watch.''

Republican former Gov. Doug Ducey, who signed the universal voucher law in 2022, is heading a parallel effort to put another measure on the ballot, this one with a "poison pill'' that would invalidate the Protect Education initiative even if it were approved.

"This measure would strip tens of thousands of Arizona families of educational choices they have made for their children, forcing students out of the schools that are serving them well and back into schools they chose to leave,'' Ducey said in his own statement.

Ducey did not address findings by the Rand Foundation that many of those who opted to get the universal vouchers already had been enrolled in private schools, with their parents picking up the tab.