U.S. Supreme Court upholds Tucson’s council election system

Regional News

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Tucson’s unusual method of electing council members will remain.

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning rebuffed a bid by a group representing Republican interests to void the system of nominating council members by ward by having them elected at large. The justices gave no reason for their ruling.

This morning’s action is the last word in the multi-year bid by the Public Integrity Alliance to have state and federal courts declare that the practice is an unconstitutional violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The group argued that it effectively gave some voters more power than others.

But that contention was most recently rejected by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Tucson’s hybrid system for electing members of its city council imposes no constitutionally significant burden on voters’ rights to vote,” the appellate court had concluded. “And Tucson has advanced a valid, sufficiently important interest to justify its choice of electoral system.”

Attorney Kory Langhofer, who represented the challengers, charged that the practice illegally disenfranchises residents of any five particular wards who have no voice on who advances from the other ward to a citywide general election. That system, he argued to the high court, gives the city “a nearly unfettered ability to deny the right to vote in the primary election.”

But there clearly was a partisan interest in the legal challenge.