PHOENIX — Voters will not get a chance this year to strengthen public financing of elections and curb the influence of private dollars.
Organizers have been able to gather only slightly more than 100,000 signatures in their bid to put the issue on the November ballot, said Julie Erfle, spokeswoman for Arizonans for Clean and Accountable Elections.
There is no way to get the more than 150,000 valid signatures by the July 7 deadline, she said.
But Erfle insisted that's not because Arizonans are opposed to the measure.
She said the organization was set to sign a contract with a firm to circulate petitions when another group with links to the business community hired the same firm for a different ballot measure.
That contract, Erfle said, had a non-compete clause which left her group without anyone to go out and get signatures.
By the time organizers found an out-of-state firm to do the work too much time had been lost, she said.
She put the blame squarely at the feet of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. And Garrick Taylor, its spokesman, did not deny working to thwart the measure.
"The board of directors of the chamber has made it clear that they want to consider all possible means to ensuring that what is essentially taxpayer funded elections on steroids did not become the law in Arizona,'' he said.
Taylor said that includes using "all options available to us” to block the measure. And he did not deny those options included non-compete contracts.
But voters still may have a chance to weigh in, at least partly, on the issue of money and how it influences elections.
A separate group is gathering signatures to force a public vote on a legislatively approved measure that would reduce state regulation of some groups that try to influence elections but refuse to disclose their donors. That drive needs only half as many signatures. And backers have until Aug. 5 to turn in their petitions.
