PHOENIX — A Tempe city councilman is going to court to block a statewide vote on a measure that could pave the way for future lawmakers to outlaw early voting.
Randy Keating contends the constitutional amendment placed on the November ballot by the Republican-controlled Legislature contains a variety of unrelated provisions. While the proposal deals largely with the conduct of elections, Keating, through attorneys Roy Herrera and Daniel Arellano, says they are sufficiently different to preclude putting them all together in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion.
He wants Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Whitten to block Secretary of State Adrian Fontes from putting it on the November general election ballot.
Keating is not alone in seeking to short-circuit public votes on various efforts by GOP lawmakers to get voter approval of their proposals.
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Other ballot measures referred to the November ballot by the Republican-controlled Legislature that are being challenged in court include:
- Blocking public schools from providing any resources, including payroll checkoffs for dues, to any union. The referendum also contains language that could be read to preclude state and local governments from negotiating with any labor organization at all — not just those representing teachers — over matters like wages, labor disputes, grievances, pay and other conditions of employment.
- Adding new restrictions to existing laws prohibiting transgender girls, those defined as having been born male, from playing girls' sports. If voters approve, there also would be new provisions about who can use which restrooms and locker room facilities.
- Enacting prohibitions designed to supplement existing laws that ban preferential treatment based on race or ethnicity. Provisions include barring the use of public funds by any university for offices or staff who promote such preferential treatment.
Those challenges are on top of a lawsuit filed Wednesday by Save Our Schools Arizona to a ballot measure billed as ensuring that students from military families can bank school voucher money to use for college, but also containing a "poison pill'' provision that, if voters pass it, would overrule any other ballot measure to impose new restrictions on Empowerment Scholarship Account vouchers.
Potential future restrictions on early voting
The measure about voting procedures was written by Scottsdale Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who said the various provisions would protect the integrity of elections.
Some provisions the measure would add to the Arizona Constitution already are law, like one that says elections "shall be decided solely by the votes of eligible citizen voters.'' It also has a blanket ban against foreign nationals spending money to influence any election.
It would also require counties to provide for ballots to be tabulated at each polling place. Most counties bring ballots to a central location where they have specialized equipment that tabulates the paper ballots.
And there is language requiring all voters to show "valid government-issued proof of identity'' before casting a ballot.
Keating points out that it does not explain how that would work for the more than 80% of Arizonans who get early ballots now. The premise is that it would be left to future legislators who, protected by the constitutional amendment, would have wide latitude to decide.
The Arizona Constitution requires that voters should be allowed to consider each of these proposals separately, Keating is telling the judge.
He said court rulings say the constitution itself requires that proposed amendments be "sufficiently related to a common purpose or principle that can be said to constitute a consistent and workable whole on the general topic embraced.''
By contrast, Keating said, what is being presented to voters in this case deals with "far flung areas of the law,'' including voter qualifications, identification requirements, ballot tabulation, language giving lawmakers additional legal latitude in passing future election laws, "and — perhaps most perplexingly — campaign finance.''
Separately, in a social media post, Keating took particular aim at potential future restrictions on early voting.
Prior to 1991, only those who had a specific excuse, like illness or being away from a home precinct on Election Day, were entitled to vote by mail.
That year the Republican-controlled Legislature agreed to allow no-excuse early voting.
"The system works,'' Keating wrote, saying it aids everyone from seniors who are no longer driving, to rural voters who do not live near polling places, to working families "who cannot afford to lose a day's wages standing in line.''
All that, Keating said, is threatened by the proposed "proof of identity'' requirement when casting a ballot, when no mechanism provided for how those who mail in their ballots could comply.
"That vagueness is not an oversight,'' he said. "It is a blueprint for chaos, one that hands future legislatures the power to define compliance however they choose.''
What makes it worse, he said, is language in the same measure that, if approved, would spell out, in the Arizona Constitution, that laws may be enacted in the future — including on early voting and mail voting — as long as they are "rationally connected to a legitimate state interest including timely and accurate election results, efficient election administration, election security, and preserving public confidence in the integrity of elections.'' All that, Keating said, would strip courts of much of their existing authority to strike down even the most restrictive future laws.
Keating is not a neutral observer. He said he is a supporter of an initiative drive that, if approved, would enshrine the right to early voting in the Constitution.
'The radical left just sued'
Kolodin lashed out at the legal challenge in his own social media post.
"The radical left just sued to deny voters the choice to pass my FAST Act,'' he wrote, using an acronym for what he is calling the Fast Accurate Secure Transparent Election Results Act.
"I will never let them silence your voice,'' wrote Kolodin, adding a plug for people to vote for him in the Republican primary for secretary of state, where he is running against Gina Swoboda, former chair of the Arizona Republican Party.
Howard Fischer is a veteran journalist who has been reporting since 1970 and covering state politics and the Legislature since 1982. Follow him on X, Bluesky and Threads at @azcapmedia or email azcapmedia@gmail.com.
