The state Supreme Court says Senate candidate Rep. Russell Jones was not guilty of petition forgery when he improperly signed as a circulator because a definition for that crime is not spelled out in Arizona law.
Instead, Justice W. Scott Bales wrote in the Aug. 9 opinion of the court’s July 20 ruling, the court had to look to other sources to determine the Legislature’s intent when it passed a law that bans candidates found guilty of petition forgery from running for elected office for five years.
The state Democratic Party, which brought the petition challenge against Mr. Jones, R-24, argued that his actions met the standards for forgery under the state’s criminal code. However, the court rejected that argument because the criminal definition of forgery is much more expansive than the forgery outlined in the state’s election statutes.
“…[W]e believe that ‘petition forgery’ would ordinarily be understood to refer to falsely signing another’s name to a petition or to otherwise fabricating signed petitions,” Justice Bales wrote.
Mr. Jones signed the back of several petitions as the circulator, claiming he gathered all of the signatures himself, even though other people gathered the signatures.
Further, the court examined the legislative record from 1996, when ARS § 16-351(F) was enacted, barring anyone guilty of petition forgery from seeking election for five years. The minutes from committee meetings and floor debate show, the court ruled, that the Legislature never intended the disqualification to be triggered by forgery under the criminal code.
So, although Mr. Jones improperly signed as the circulator and misled the Maricopa County Superior Court in his testimony, he was not guilty of petition forgery, and therefore was not prohibited from running for the state Senate.
The Supreme Court also explained why it ruled against a cross-appeal Democrat lawyers had filed that sought to invalidate one petition for not containing the specific date of the primary election. Instead of identifying the primary election date as Sept. 12, 2006, the petition merely listed the date as 2006.
The court, Justice Bales wrote, finds that identifying the election by only the year was substantially compliant with election law because there is only one date prescribed by state law for primary elections for legislative seats.
The opinion also called on the Legislature to further define petition forgery, especially as it relates to future cases similar to Mr. Jones’.
“It is for the Legislature to consider, however, whether additional sanctions — such as automatic disqualification from the election in question or the five-year disqualification [from running]… — are appropriate when a candidate falsely affirms that he is the circulator of petitions actually circulated by others,” it read.
FYI
The case number is Cv-06-0237-AP/EL