Federal Judge Orders Phoenix School Board Election Redo Due to Ballot Errors
In an unexpected turn of events, Maricopa County is required to conduct a new election for two seats on the Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board. This decision comes after a federal judge identified incorrect instructions on ballots that affected the voting process.
The controversy centers around a federal consent decree that mandates Phoenix Union voters to cast only a single vote for the two available board positions. This decree originated from a 1990 lawsuit aimed at preventing vote dilution among minority groups within the district.
Maricopa County officials alerted the court in October regarding their mistake of printing ballots that instructed voters to select up to two candidates, which contravened the consent decree.
According to court records, “By the time Maricopa County became aware of the mistake, voters on the Active Early Voting List had already received their ballots and commenced voting.”
The county sought guidance from a federal court to address the issue.
Initially, Judge G. Murray Snow allowed the election to proceed but halted the certification of the results, preventing election officials from finalizing the count.
Despite Francisco Pastor-Rivera and Aaron Marquez being declared winners, Judge Snow ordered the county on December 12 to conduct a special, mail-in election on March 11 to resolve the issue.
The judge’s order highlighted that while most voters adhered to the decree, “at least 44,605 voters selected two candidates on their ballots, and thus cast ballots in violation of the Decree.”
This discrepancy could have influenced the election’s outcome, as Marquez’s margin over third-place candidate Debbie Cross was fewer than 2,000 votes, according to Judge Snow.
“The mistake simply makes it impossible to declare, with any confidence, who the winners of a legally conducted election would be or that the mistake was not consequential,” he noted.
Though Judge Snow acknowledged that moving the election from a presidential year to a special election in 2025 might lead to lower voter turnout, he concluded that the consent decree’s conditions necessitated a rerun.
“As the results of the recent general election demonstrate, however, more voters in a fatally flawed election, at least in this instance, do not help determine who would have won the election had it been lawfully conducted,” Snow wrote.
—
Read More Arizona News
