(The Center Square) – Some Phoenix residents will have yet another election on March 11, 2025, for two seats on the Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board.
The United States District Court of Arizona ruled Thursday that another election must be conducted to comply with a prior consent decree on the school district’s elections following an error on the ballot for the race during the November election.
The top two vote-getters in the race won the election, but voters are only supposed to select one candidate as part of the consent decree originally developed in the 1990s to assure minorities were fairly represented in the voting process. However, the November ballot instructed them to vote for two, which prompted the order for a do-over.
The court ruling noted that Maricopa County informed the court about the error, as ballots were already being sent out to those on the early voting list.
“Maricopa County’s mistake resulted in 44,605 illegitimate votes being cast when only 1,979 votes would distinguish a winner from a loser. Such a fundamental and potentially consequential error “undermines the organic processes of the ballot” itself and cannot be allowed to stand, regardless of the good faith of Maricopa County in committing it,” the judge wrote.
“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,” the ruling continued.
Francisco Pastor-Rivera and state Rep.-elect Aaron Marquez were the two leaders in the November race. Deborah Cross and Aiden Ramirez came in third and fourth place, respectively. All four of the contenders will be in the March 11 race, according to the court order.
The county is expected to foot the bill for the cost of the election, and it’s unclear what that cost is.