Four Cases Appealed To Supreme Court... So Far; ARIZONA ELECTION CHALLENGES UPDATE - Big Cases and Small Cases

The Arizona Supreme Court has received four expedited appeals from election challenges... so far.

As promised to AZ Law in an earlier update, Corporation Commissioner Boyd Dunn filed his appeal late Friday. The main issue will be whether or not the trial judge should have combined the signatures invalidated in each of the two separate lawsuits filed against Dunn. (The circulator who forged most of the signatures she collected will likely not be a significant issue, because the judge relied on Supreme Court precedent to strike all of the signatures on her petition.)

Glendale is the hotspot in this election cycle - two rulings are being appealed. Michelle Robertson is running for Mayor, and the judge ruled in her favor. He found that she had 58 more valid signatures than the 1297 required.

The challenger (Demetra Lau) is appealing. Bryce Alexander is running for the City Council and survived the challenge by 8 signatures. However, Plaintiff Joyce Clark is contending that the judge should have struck 34 signatures collected by a convicted felon. Judge Sanders found that the circulator's rights were restored under Arizona law.

Finally, the Supreme Court will hear an appeal by the person who challenged State House candidate Javier Soto (Democrat in LD3). Patrick McKenna is the challenger. (As of Saturday evening, the bases for the judge's ruling are not yet available on the court's website, so the issues on appeal are not yet clear.) Because the Pima County Attorney's Office indicated that the deadline to finalize the ballot format is not until June 2, this will not be on as tight a briefing schedule as the other appeals.

There is no word yet on whether the woman who challenged State Rep. Shawnna Bolick will appeal the ruling in the legislator's favor. The deadline for most or all appeals in the elections challenges will be this coming Friday.

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Here is the complete, updated spreadsheet of election challenges from around the state. This is currently updated as of 8pm, May 2.

It includes all of the cases from Maricopa County Superior Court - which handles statewide, multi-county, and county wide cases. It also includes cases from other counties that were provided to Arizona's Politics/AZ Law by readers or officials.

If you have info on any cases - from any county - that are not listed here, please email me all of the necessary data (and a link, if available) to Paul.Weich.AZlaw @ gmail.com. Ditto if you have updates on the spreadsheet.