Key points:

• A judge has ruled on the signature challenge to the Protect Education Act, but it remains unclear whether the measure will qualify for the ballot.

• The state’s ballot printing deadline for the general election is Aug. 20.

• An appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court is likely regardless of the outcome. 

Despite a judge’s new ruling in the Protect Education Act signature challenge, it’s still unclear whether the school voucher reform initiative will be allowed on the general election ballot. 

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David McDowell issued an expedited ruling Thursday evening on the challenge by Empowerment Scholarship Account advocates who contend Protect Education Act petition circulators didn’t collect enough valid signatures. 

McDowell tossed thousands of signatures from multiple circulators for the Protect Education Act. His ruling also favored the plaintiffs on the double-counting of invalid signatures, which may keep the initiative off the ballot. 

The measure, also known as Proposition 212, garnered more than 421,000 signatures, more than the 255,949 required. A review from the Secretary of State’s Office reduced the total to 389,376, from which Arizona’s counties would conduct a random sampling to determine a signature validity rate.

That number was further reduced in court after plaintiffs objected to the qualifications of numerous circulators for a variety of reasons, resulting in the removal of many signatures collected by those who testified throughout a three-day trial. Their petitions might be tossed because of clerical errors when providing their addresses and phone numbers or because they hadn’t had their civil rights restored following a felony conviction.

Then came the issue of duplicate signatures. If someone signs an initiative more than once, Arizona law requires all but one of their signatures to be disqualified. That would disqualify another 24,369 signatures, which was the difference in the measure being eligible for the ballot. 

If duplicate signatures disqualify a measure from the ballot, Arizona case law allows the Secretary of State to use the validity rate calculated by the counties to avoid double-counting the signatures ruled out.

McDowell ruled against arguments raised by Protect Education Act attorneys that the legal challenges to county recorder criteria result in double counting because those challenges are already accounted for in the validity rate.

“The court agrees that it is conceivable that a double count could occur, but the court cannot make a decision based upon a hypothetical double counting of duplicate signatures,” McDowell wrote. 

But McDowell didn’t know at the time of his ruling whether the measure would qualify for the ballot because not all counties have completed their review of the secretary’s random sample and a validity rate hasn’t been calculated yet. 

The state’s deadline to print ballots is Aug. 20, and the case is being expedited to allow for a potential appeal. 

Kory Langhofer, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Thursday night that the case is awaiting results from Maricopa County and Apache County. If those counties report something similar to the current average validity rate of the 13 other Arizona counties, the Protect Education Act would fall short by about 6,300 signatures. 

Plaintiffs challenged signatures collected by more than 110 circulators, according to McDowell’s ruling. The case will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court when the counties get a validity rate, Langhofer said.