The Arizona Supreme Court released its explanation of an earlier decision credited with dooming the 2008 TIME transportation ballot initiative and called on legislators to revamp initiative laws to ease the pre-election workloads of officials.
The TIME measure, which was expected to raise $42.6 billion over 30 years to address the state’s infrastructure needs, was dealt a mortal blow in August when the high court upheld a trial court’s decision that supporters of the measure had waited too long to challenge the actions of Secretary of State Jan Brewer.
Brewer had rejected TIME petition sheets containing a variety of errors, and the measure was disqualified. Defending herself from the lawsuit, Brewer cited state law that imposes a 10-day deadline to challenge the rejection of petition sheets. The sheets, claimed TIME officials, were improperly rejected and cost the committee thousands of signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot.
Attorneys representing TIME supporters argued on two fronts: First, that the earlier court decision was erroneous; and, second, that a state law allowing judges to command officials to carry out their duties could have forced Brewer to re-examine disqualified petition sheets.
The TIME committee has claimed, essentially, that Brewer overzealously disqualified petition sheets containing thousands of signatures. TIME attorneys then proceeded to argue that the state’s 10-day deadline to appeal a secretary’s refusal to accept petitions was unworkable because subsequent signature-verification processes by counties are allowed to proceed for up to 15 days before a secretary will certify or decertify a ballot proposition.
In the Nov. 18 opinion, the high court sided with the ruling of Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Mark Aceto, and disagreed with TIME attorneys on both fronts.
A ruling in favor of the latter argument would have left citizens with no avenue to seek a court ruling on a secretary of state’s disqualification of petition sheets and signatures, wrote Justice Andrew Hurwitz, in a unanimous opinion.
The Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling earned an unusual rebuke from Gov. Janet Napolitano, a chief supporter of the TIME initiative.
“I can respect the Supreme Court and just say they’re dead wrong and it’s a shallow opinion,” she said. “I thought it was wrong and wrongly decided on a whole host of areas.”
Cari Gerchick, Supreme Court spokeswoman, said the “opinion speaks for itself.”
The high court also suggested that lawmakers re-examine existing ballot-initiative laws to help state and county election officials manage increasingly high workloads during election years and to broaden the time period for legal challenges.
The court noted that, even without litigation, county election officials have acknowledged an inability to comply with laws requiring verification of all signatures for ballot measures in the event committees are found to have filed less than the required number of valid signatures.
“Our election officials are required to process large numbers of initiative and referendum petitions,” Hurwitz wrote. “The growth of the state’s electorate means that the number of signature submitted in order to qualify for placement on the ballot has also steadily grown. And, even when the secretary and county recorders complete the verification process within the statutory deadlines, the time for judicial review has been shortened by the needs to prepare ballots for early voting.”
TIME attorney Paul Eckstein found comfort in the fact the justices recognized the growing problems with the initiative process, and said he felt the measure’s absence from the ballot could have been a “blessing in disguise” as many propositions were defeated at the polls in November.
“God knows if it would have passed,” said Eckstein, adding that voters likely would have rejected any tax increase with an economic recession looming. “This was a rough election year.”
The call for initiative reform was well-received by Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne.
Faced with “monstrous amounts” of signatures for verification and an unusually high amount of invalid signatures this year, Osborne said reform could come by creating an earlier signature-filing deadline or a possible lowering of the amount of signatures necessary for review.
Osborne suggested moving the deadline to March or April from early July to allow more time for review. Current law requiring the complete verification of 5 percent of a committee’s filed signatures could also be reviewed, she said.
“The court is right,” said Osborne. “We desperately need to reform that.”