Hawkeye Reporter

A federal court has reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a ballot position case, Mecinas v. Hobbs, brought by three Arizona voters and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit also remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.

Derek Muller, a University of Iowa law professor and nationally recognized expert on election law, said the case could set a precedent for future legal actions in other states where similar suits filed in the past have failed.

“I expect that Arizona will win in the end and that the law will stand,” Muller told the Hawkeye Reporter. “But if the law is ruled unconstitutional, then it certainly could set a precedent for other states.”

University of Iowa law professor Derek Muller. | law.uiowa.edu

The DNC challenged Arizona’s ballot order statute that dictates that in each county, candidates affiliated with the political party of the person who received the most votes in that county in the last gubernatorial race be listed first on the general election ballot.

The DNC argued that the law violates the First and 14th Amendments by giving candidates at the top of the ballot greater voter exposure. The DNC said candidates should be ordered alphabetically or randomly, nonpartisan methods of ordering.

The district court ruled DNC had no standing to bring the suit. But a panel of the 9th Circuit ruled that the circuit court erred in dismissing the suit on these grounds.

“Specifically, the panel held at least one of the plaintiffs [the DNC] had standing to bring this suit,” the court wrote in a summary of the case. “The panel held that, (1) the DNC satisfied the injury in fact requirement on the basis of its competitive standing, (2) the challenged law was traceable to the secretary [of state], and (3) having shown that an injunction against the secretary [of state] would significantly increase the likelihood of relief, [the] plaintiffs met their burden as to redressability.”

Muller said that some states do list candidates randomly or alphabetically but that most states have laws similar to Arizona’s. He said the laws could give candidates a “marginal advantage,” but one that’s impossible to quantify.

“There are practical reasons to order candidates the way Arizona does,” he said. “It makes it easier for voters to find the candidates they are looking to vote for.”

The DNC has challenged similar laws in other states with no success.

Florida public media outlet WFSU reported that in 2020 a federal appeals court in Florida ruled that Democratic voters and affiliated groups had no standing to challenge the state’s ballot order law, which places candidates from the same party as the governor at the top of the ballot. The court also ruled that the suit improperly named Secretary of State Laurel Lee in the lawsuit.