Court hearings set for lawsuits on AZ primary measure - CBS 5 - KPHO

Back-to-back court hearings are scheduled Thursday on dueling lawsuits over whether Arizona voters will decide the fate of an initiative proposal to dramatically change how the state conducts primary elections.

A lawsuit filed by the proposal's supporters seeks to overturn election officials' findings that initiative petitions lacked enough valid voter signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

A countersuit filed by opponents says thousands of petition pages and the signatures they contain are invalid. That suit alleges some circulators either were ineligible because of criminal convictions or didn't make required out-of-state residency disclosures.

Under the initiative, Arizona voters could vote for any primary election candidate regardless of party affiliation. Also, the primary's top two finishers would advance to the general election regardless of partisan affiliation.

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