Some say school-voucher referendum no longer fair

The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office is under fire for its sudden decision to allow dozens of observers into the room as officials began verifying signatures supporting the school-voucher referendum.

Save Our Schools Arizona, the grassroots group that gathered more than 111,000 signatures to temporarily block Senate Bill 1431 from going into effect, said the decision to allow so many observers on Tuesday created a circuslike atmosphere that gave their opponents an unfair advantage.

“It seems to us after having watched the first 48 hours of this experience, that despite their claims that this just happened to be the moment where they decided to be transparent, that this was instead a guise to allow the dark-money groups — American Federation for Children and Americans for Prosperity ... into the room to give an early view of the petitions, and to be able to have influence over the process of validating and verifying the petitions,” said Dawn PenichThacker, spokeswoman for Save Our Schools Arizona. “That is exactly what they got.” How elections officials carry out the verification process could decide whether the referendum makes the ballot. Supporters of the referendum needs 75,321 valid signatures to keep the law on hold and to send it to voters to decide its fate.

State elections officials typically allow limited observation of the process, officials said, but acknowledgedthey had permitted many more observers this week than in the past.

Kim Martinez, spokeswoman for American Federation for Children, the Washington, D.C.-school-choice advocacy group that lobbied for SB 1431 and opposes the referendum, said she was pleased with the process.

Elections officials are “doing an efficient job,” she said. “They’ve been very firm but fair to both sides so far.”

In her view, the office’s expectations were clear, and no party had an edge over the other.

“There’s no advantage to be had,” she wrote in an email. “A signature is either valid or it isn’t. The petitions were either filled out correctly and notarized properly or they weren’t. It’s cut and dry.”

SB 1431 made all 1.1 million Arizona students eligible to apply for the program, which grants tax dollars to parents for private-school tuition or other education expenses. While broadening eligibility, the bill capped the number of recipients at 30,000 by 2022.

Prior to expansion, the program had been limited to certain students, including those with special needs, in poor-performing schools or from military families.

The new signature-vetting process immediately drew criticism from Save Our Schools observers who have accused elections officials of letting opponents undermine the integrity of the process.

Eric Spencer, the state elections director, pushed back against that characterization.

“There’s no inside information conveyed to one party that the other side doesn’t get,” Spencer said. He added, “Nobody’s been sandbagged at all.”

Spencer, who previously worked in private practice as an election-law attorney, said he decided to implement the new observational procedure after learning Monday that the margin to qualify for the ballot could be tight.

Records show he emailed parties from both sides about the new process at 11:20 p.m. Monday.

Spencer said in an interview Friday that he intended to increase transparency about the office’s handling of a politically charged issue. The office’s spokesman said the idea was discussed “internally with staff who felt it would be best to open the process to public view,” including the news media.

“Since it was going to be close and since it was a highly-charged issue on both sides, it was important that everybody understand the secretary of state was going to process this with integrity,” Spencer said. “The best way to ensure that integrity was to let them see what we’re doing.”

After the petitions were delivered by Save Our Schools, he allowed 12 observers from each side into the room to watch staff unstaple, review and electronically scan thousands of pages for further examination, he said.

In the rules emailed the night before, Spencer asked that certain protocols be followed, including that observers not intervene, not touch petitions, and not use their phones.

Save Our Schools Arizona said that opponents of the referendum, in spite of those rules, asked election workers to put petitions in boxes for potential disqualification, peered into boxes, tried to talk to observers from Save Our Schools, and gave “direct instructions to Secretary of State staff about petitions they allege have problems.”

Spencer said at one point he asked observers from both sides to stop interfering and warned that they would be kicked out if they did not abide by the rules.

“In no case was a worker influenced by that (interference), did something different as a result of that, violated the law, but there were anecdotal instances of statements being made,” he said. “But it was by both sides and when that was brought to our attention, we nipped it in the bud immediately.”

After the petitions were electronically scanned and staffers moved to more restricted areas of the Secretary of State’s Office, Spencer said he allowed only one observer per side in each area where petitions were being scrutinized. He said the rules for observers changed only as the petitions moved through the process.

On Friday, workers quietly reviewed signatures at banks of computers on the seventh floor of the Capitol’s executive tower. Behind them stood one observer from the pro-referendum side and another from the opponents. They peered at computer screens, scribbling notes on clipboards that will be passed to attorneys as evidence for any potential legal case.

Save Our Schools is a grass-roots team of parents, public-education and other volunteers that formed to oppose expansion of the school-voucher program to allow all 1.1 million public students to be eligible to use public tax dollars for private school.

The measure has been criticized by public-education advocates who say public funds should not subsidize private-school tuition for a program that lacks transparency and accountability. Supporters say parents should be able to take money that otherwise would go to their public school districts and spend it however they see fit.

Save Our Schools is made of up volunteers with virtually no political experience, let alone money: It reported an average contribution of $38 by supporters.

By contrast, some of SB 1431’s most visible supporters are well-funded “dark money” groups — which aren’t required to report the source of their funding — with access to high-profile attorneys and small armies of volunteers.

During the 2016 election, for example, American Federation for Children spent at least $218,000 in Arizona legislative primaries, the most of any independent expenditure committee seeking to influence such races last year.

The Arizona chapter head of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, another dark-money group, has marshaled the group’s allies to scrutinize petitions over the weekend. But it appears a courtroom, not the signatureverification room, is where the issue will be decided.

Follow the reporter on Twitter @yvonnewingett and reach her at yvonne.wingett@arizona republic.com or 602-4444712.