Court won’t force Adrian Fontes to rewrite GOP election measure’s ballot summary

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled against three supporters of Proposition 144 who, represented by Stephen Miller's America First Legal Foundation, sued to force Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to add citizenship-requirement language to the ballot summary. The court's majority found the plaintiffs lacked standing, and separately concluded Fontes's fifty-word description fell within his legal discretion.

Prop. 144, passed by Arizona Republicans in a party-line June vote, would require ID for all voters including the roughly 80% who vote by mail, bar foreign nationals from spending on state elections, mandate on-site ballot tabulation, and raise the bar for challenging legislature-passed election laws. It also restates citizenship requirements for registering and voting that have existed in Arizona law since statehood in 1912.

Chief Justice Ann Timmer wrote that the plaintiffs' formal backing of the measure in the legislature's system didn't expose them to any harm beyond what any voter faces, and that nothing stops them from campaigning for the proposition regardless of the summary's wording. Two justices dissented, arguing the citizenship provisions were principal enough to require inclusion.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.