GOP appeals election measure ballot description to Arizona Supreme Court

A law firm linked to President Donald Trump says that the Democratic Arizona Secretary of State’s description of a Republican ballot proposition that would make sweeping election changes is illegal, and wants the state’s highest court to order him to change it. 

Representing three voters who supported Proposition 144 during the legislative process, America First Legal asked the Arizona Supreme Court on Friday to take up the case, two days after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Adele Ponce dismissed it. 

Arguing on behalf of America First Legal, attorney James Rogers wrote in the petition to the high court that Ponce made legal errors in her decision that “are an abuse of discretion and leave in place official action exceeding the authority granted” by state law.

The America First Legal Foundation was created by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Project 2025 and one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisors.

Rogers contends that the description of Prop. 144 set to appear on the November ballot, which Fontes’ office wrote, leaves out some of the most important provisions of the measure. Additionally, Rogers says that descriptions of what a “yes” or “no” vote would do, also written by Fontes, include “unresolved assumptions.” 

Prop. 144, also known as the “Fast Accurate Secure Transparent Election Results Act,” was one of five controversial last-minute ballot referrals that the Republicans who control the Arizona Legislature approved along party lines in a marathon night of voting on the last day of the annual legislative session in June.

Written by state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a Scottsdale Republican who is running against Fontes for secretary of state, the proposition would prohibit foreign nationals from spending money to influence elections, require every voter to show government identification before casting a ballot in every election and require all polling locations to provide on-site tabulation of ballots for voters who want it.

Kolodin is an attorney and election denier who was sanctioned by the Arizona State Bar in 2023 for his part in lawsuits challenging the 2020 election that made implausible and evidence-free claims of massive election fraud. He represented Trump’s campaign in the so-called “kraken” lawsuit in Arizona that was based on claims made by people with no actual knowledge of the elections.

The description of Prop. 144 to be printed on November ballots reads: “Requires all voters, including voters who vote by mail, to show government-issued ID to vote in each election; makes other changes to election administration and campaign finance prohibitions.”

America First Legal Foundation’s chief complaint with Fontes’ description is its failure to mention that Prop. 144 would bake into the state constitution that “only citizens may register and vote in Arizona elections,” as well as that elections “shall be decided solely by the votes of eligible citizen voters.”

Arizona voters in 2004 approved a state law to require proof of citizenship when a person registers to vote and ban non-citizen voting, occurrences of which are exceedingly rare. Because it was voter-approved, that law is protected by a constitutional provision barring lawmakers from repealing or weakening it.

“The title uses twenty-eight words,” Rogers wrote. “It does not mention citizenship, prohibitions on foreign funding to influence elections, or guaranteed on-site tabulation.”

Ballot measure title descriptions are capped at 50 words. 

Fontes argued in the trial court that Prop. 144’s backers want to force their preferred campaign arguments into the ballot description.

“Plaintiffs seek to wrest control over the Ballot Language from two officials directly accountable to Arizona voters at the last minute, and instead allow themselves — three random individuals who are accountable to no one and have a one-sided position on this measure — to write the Ballot Language,” Fontes argued to the lower court. “This does not comport with Arizona law, and is entirely unworkable.”

The lower court ultimately agreed with Fontes’ argument that the “Ballot Language is not false or clearly misleading, nor does it mislead via omission. It covers the principal provisions of Prop 144, and the ‘essential change in existing law’ this measure would cause.”

Rogers argued that Fontes didn’t have the discretion to focus the description on changes the ballot measure would make that aren’t already requirements of state or federal law. 

“(T)he descriptive title must summarize principal provisions, not merely novel provisions,” Rogers wrote. 

The America First Legal Foundation argued that Fontes editorialized in the ballot description of what a “yes” vote would mean when he wrote that it would “create a new standard for judicial review of election laws under the Arizona Constitution, which may make it harder to challenge election laws.”

Rogers says that because law regarding whether the measure would make challenging election laws more difficult wasn’t settled, it shouldn’t be mentioned on the ballot. 

“No court has decided those issues,” he wrote. “Reasonable lawyers may debate them. The debate is precisely why the conclusion does not belong in the State’s official wording.”

Rogers also took issue with “yes” vote language that described the prohibition on spending by foreign nationals as “similar to prohibitions that already exist in federal law.”

America First Legal argued that the trial court erred in its decision to allow such language because Fontes’ descriptions “can reasonably be regarded as an attempt to provide necessary and appropriate information to the voting public.” 

But Rogers wrote that the description did not meet Fontes’ legal responsibility when drafting ballot language. 

“The duty is not merely to draft and publish some language; it is to draft and publish language possessing the content the Legislature mandated,” Rogers wrote. “Performing the shell of a statutory task while violating its substantive requirements is nonperformance, not protected discretion.”

America First Legal also argued that the lower court improperly ruled that the three supporters of Prop. 144 didn’t have enough of a specific stake in the ballot measure to bring their lawsuit. 

In arguments to the lower court, Fontes described the supporters as “three random individuals” who had no more interest in the ballot language than any other voter, precluding them from bringing a lawsuit based on potential harms specific to them. 

Because the three supporters formally registered their support for the ballot measure in the Arizona Legislature’s system, which is publicly viewable, Rogers contends that a misleading ballot description would harm them specifically. 

“The result is a government-created distortion of Petitioners’ own recorded position: anyone who compares the (legislative system) record with the State’s ballot materials is invited to understand Petitioners as supporting the measure as Respondents have described it, rather than the text Petitioners actually endorsed,” Rogers wrote. 

He added that the reportedly inaccurate ballot description distorts what the supporters were actually backing when they signed in official support of Prop. 144. 

“Respondents’ subsequent use of an official description that suppresses principal provisions and substitutes disputed commentary devalues the concrete governmental participation Petitioners already undertook: the proposal presented to voters through the State’s most authoritative description is materially different from the proposal Petitioners placed their names behind during the legislative process,” Rogers wrote. 

But in that argument America First Legal fails to acknowledge that the version of Prop. 144, then known as House Concurrent Resolution 2001, that passed the legislature in June underwent significant edits since they formally endorsed it in late 2025 and early 2026. 

The version that the three supporters endorsed would have completely eliminated the state’s active early voter list that automatically sends ballots to voters and cut off early ballot drop offs the Friday before an election, both provisions that were removed from the final version of the proposition.

The Supreme Court must rule on the case by Aug. 20 so that ballot printing can begin on Aug. 21.