PHOENIX — A new legal fight is brewing that could forever change elections in Arizona.
The attorney for the Arizona Independent Party said he has served a "notice of claim'' against Gov. Katie Hobbs and other state officials alleging that the signature requirements in Arizona law for political independents to get on the ballot are illegal. Anthony Ramirez contends that those who want to run for office without party affiliation are "subjected to discriminatory ballot-access burdens.''
All that is borne out, he said, in the numbers.
In the 2024 election — the numbers for 2026 won't be ready until next month — someone running for statewide office from the Republican Party needed at least 7,072 valid signatures. That is based on a percentage of the number of Arizonans who are registered with the party.
For Democrats, the number to qualify for the ballot was 6,556. And smaller parties, based on their limited registration, had smaller numbers.
But someone without political affiliation had to gather at least 42,703 signatures to get a chance to run for statewide office.
Ramirez said that violates federal constitutional equal protection rights.
The next step after the notice of claim is to ask a judge to void the laws.
It's no coincidence that the claim comes amid a legal fight over whether the party can change its name.
It gained recognized status in Arizona in 2023 under the banner of the No Labels Party despite efforts by the Arizona Democratic Party to keep it off the ballot.
At that time, it was part of a national effort to find a presidential candidate for the 2024 race as an alternative to whoever was picked by the Republican and Democratic parties.
As it turned out, there wasn't a No Labels nominee for president.
Now, however, the local party has rebranded itself as the Arizona Independent Party, a move that former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson, who chairs the party, said is designed to allow those who don't align themselves with other parties to run for office — and do so without the burden of having to gather tens of thousands of signatures.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes approved the name change.
That, in turn, prompted a lawsuit late last month by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission asking a judge to void the action.
It contends that a party cannot simply change its name and thereby reregister everyone who is signed up with it. Instead, the commission says the Arizona Independent Party would need to start from scratch, gathering the signatures needed to form a new party.
And then there's the confusion question: Would someone who wants to be a true unaffiliated voter registering online inadvertently sign up with the Arizona Independent Party.
Fontes, for his part, said he has done nothing illegal. And he said he is working with other state and local officials to make changes to the voter registration system to avoid that kind of confusion.
Right now, that lawsuit is just between the commission and Fontes. Johnson, however, said that, as the party affected by all this, it has the right to intercede and have some say.
"And, giving us standing, we're going to try to go after the whole enchilada,'' he said.
That, he said, means widening the lawsuit to ask a judge to review not just whether the party can change its name but the larger issue of whether it's constitutional to place a higher burden on unaffiliated candidates to get on the ballot.
"We don't think that the signature disparity that it created for independents in itself is legal,'' Johnson said.
And that, in turn, would expand the lawsuit to sue the state itself, which puts Hobbs and Fontes in the legal position of having to defend those laws.
Ramirez said the underlying legal spat over whether the party can change its name pales in comparison.
"I wouldn't get hung up on the naming issue,'' Ramirez responded. "That's the portal,'' he said, providing a legal justification to ask the court whether the laws governing the higher signature requirements by independents pass constitutional muster.
"The real issue is how Arizona treats, or has been treating independent voters and independent candidates,'' Ramirez said. "And that problem is massive.''
The politically unaffiliated — those who do not align with any of the five recognized parties — make up nearly 34.4% of registered voters. Only registered Republicans outnumber them — but not by much at 35.6%.
"However, it is the most discriminated against bloc,'' he said.
Ramirez said there are court rulings — albeit from elsewhere — to back up his contention that the signature requirements in Arizona are illegal.
One is a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 1979 about an Illinois law that said new political parties and independent candidates need what the justices said were "substantially more signatures to gain access to the ballot than a similarly situated party or candidate for statewide office.''
Justice Thurgood Marshall, writing for the court, said when a state imposes such restrictions, it must show that it is "necessary to serve a compelling interest.'' And here, he said, the restriction was unconstitutional.
And in a decision with a different twist, the Supreme Court in 1983 voided an Ohio law that set a deadline for independent candidates for president to get on the ballot that differed from laws affecting recognized parties.
"This is an argument that should have happened a long time ago,'' Ramirez said, but came to the fore now over the fight over the bid to rename the No Labels Party.
An aide to Fontes said that, as the state's chief elections officer, he has to "follow the law as written'' until it is changed. But Calli Jones said her boss does have some feelings about all this.
"It is not lost on our office that despite such a large portion of the electorate not belonging to a designated party, the current signature requirements do disincentivize candidates and disenfranchise voters who do not align with the two major parties,'' she said.
Hobbs, for her part, said she won't comment on whether she believes the current system is fair. But, like Fontes, she said it isn't up to her to decide whether the higher signature requirements for independent candidates is legal.
"That is the law of the state that was passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor at the time,'' she said. "If voters want to change that, they can go to the Legislature to try to change it.''
There also is having the system declared unconstitutional — what Johnson and Ramirez are trying to do.
Hobbs said there's another legal option: Anyone interested in changing the law can seek to put the issue to voters.
There actually was a measure to do something close to that on the 2012 ballot
Proposition 121 would have created a single open primary where all candidates would have the same signature requirements to get on the ballot and would run against each other, and all voters could vote for any candidate. Then the top two vote-getters would run against each other in the general election regardless of party affiliation. But that proposal, led by Johnson — the same person behind the Arizona Independent Party — failed by a 2-1 margin.
