Saturday, July 26, 2014

Arizona Prop-121 Non-Partisan Elections for 2016 Ballot


Paul Johnson, the former Mayor of Phoenix, will attempt to qualify an initiative in 2016 to convert all Arizona elections, except presidential elections, to non-partisan elections.  There will be no party labels on any ballot, except for President, under the proposal.

The proposal, Prop-121, being prepared for the 2016 ballot would have all candidates of all political stripes run in a wide-open primary.  Then the top-two vote-getters in each race would face off in the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

Johnson said the two major parties rig the system to suppress independent voters, who he believes are more moderate politically than those who remain party faithful.  And he said that is not blunted even though independents, who outnumber both Democrats and Republicans, can vote in partisan primaries.

By law, Johnson and his allies cannot start circulating petitions until after this year’s general election.

The number of signatures will be set at 15 percent of those who vote in this year’s gubernatorial race, a goal likely to approach 300,000.

UPDATE
A new app, from the Open Nonpartisan Elections committee, is designed to drum up support for a 2016 ballot measure that will ask Arizona voters if they want to abolish the existing partisan-primary system and replace it with an Non-Partisan system.  The aim is to amp up the number of independents who actually vote in next month's primary.

You can get the app through your app store by searching for Arizona Nonpartisan Movement.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati talk bubble Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us Digg! StumbleUpon

1 comment:

richardwinger said...

This proposal is termed "non-partisan election" in the body of the article. I feel that is the best name for Johnson's idea, and it would be better if the title of this post also called it a non-partisan election. It is not good writing to use the same term for different ideas.