Arizona school choice reform effort fails before reaching ballots

The Arizona Supreme Court upheld a lower court's method for removing roughly 24,000 duplicate signatures from petitions for the Protect Education Act, likely dropping the measure below the threshold needed to reach the ballot. The measure, which gathered nearly twice the required signatures initially, would have capped voucher eligibility at $150,000 income and barred using public education dollars for luxury purchases like diamond rings and out-of-state trips.

A lawsuit from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and Goldwater Institute triggered the disqualifications over invalid addresses and ineligible petition circulators, some with felony backgrounds. The state's Empowerment Scholarship Account program, expanded to all students in 2022, now costs over $1 billion annually and has documented millions in fraudulent spending, though Republicans have resisted adding guardrails.

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