Arizona voters will not decide on Proposition 212 or Proposition 145 this November after two Arizona Supreme Court rulings on Aug. 18, 2026, removed both measures from the ballot.
Both measures related to Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, but in different ways: Proposition 212 would have restricted ESA eligibility and spending, while Proposition 145 would have prohibited the state from confiscating military families' ESA funds and voided any conflicting ballot measures, such as Proposition 212.
Proposition 212 fell short after the court mandated a signature-counting method that will leave too few valid signatures to qualify. Proposition 145 was blocked separately after the court upheld a lower court ruling that the measure violated the state constitution's separate amendment rule.
Proposition 212
Proposition 212, an initiated state statute, would have amended Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program. It would have limited eligibility to families earning less than $150,000 per year, beginning in the 2027-2028 school year, with the threshold adjusted by 2% annually. Under the initiative, families would not have been able to use ESAs to purchase luxury items, including out-of-state travel, dining, amusement park tickets, home appliances, or home improvements. The initiative would have prohibited paying family members from ESAs, except for students with disabilities.
On Aug. 18, 2026, Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann Timmer issued a ruling mandating specific methods for counting duplicate signatures on petitions for Proposition 212. Those methods will result in not enough signatures being verified to place Proposition 212 on the November ballot.
On July 2, the Protect Education, Accountability Now campaign submitted 421,451 signatures to the Arizona secretary of state supporting Proposition 212. The Arizona secretary of state is responsible for counting the signatures submitted and determining which are valid and which are invalid. A duplicate signature, for example, would be invalid.
On July 20, 2026, the Goldwater Institute filed a complaint stating that the campaign submitted a number of invalid signatures, including duplicates, that the secretary of state should not count.
On Aug. 13, the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled that when counting signatures, the secretary of state and county officials should remove duplicate signatures before determining the overall validity rate of signatures submitted in a county, not after. Protect Education, Accountability Now appealed to the state Supreme Court and argued that removing signatures before determining a validity rate could result in a duplicate signature being subtracted from the number of valid signatures twice.
On Aug. 18, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling and instructed the trial court to use those guidelines and methods when determining the final signature count for Proposition 212.
Reactions to the ruling
After the ruling was published, the Goldwater Institute announced that the measure did not have enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, as using the methods required by the Arizona Supreme Court would validate fewer than the required 255,949 signatures.
Former Gov. Doug Ducey (R), board member of the Goldwater Institute, said, “Tens of thousands of parents and students across Arizona are breathing a sigh of relief today. Today’s ruling should send a clear message to any other anti-parent, anti-school-choice organization: Arizonans overwhelmingly embrace school choice and will continue to do so, regardless of how many millions of dollars these groups waste trying to take it away.”
Save Our Schools Arizona, a founding member of the Protect Education, Accountability Now campaign, called the ruling a "devastating final blow to the Protect Education Act, and to the hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters who signed in just 14 weeks.”
Their Aug. 18 statement also said, “The lengths that the voucher lobby went to invalidate signatures with scorched-earth legal objections shows just how terrified they are of Arizona voters actually having a say in how our tax dollars are spent, and how sure they were that Arizona voters would prioritize funding a robust public education system over private schools that pick and choose students and create a segregated system of haves and have-nots.”
Historical context
Without Proposition 212 on the Arizona ballot, 2026 will be the first even-numbered year since 2014 with no citizen-initiated measures on the statewide ballot. Before 2014, every even-numbered year had at least one citizen-initiated measure on the ballot since 1970. Between 2000 and 2024, the average number of citizen-initiated measures on the ballot was approximately three.
Between 1911, the year before Arizona statehood, and 2025, Arizonans voted on 494 ballot measures. Two hundred and nineteen (219) of those measures were initiated by citizens. Of those, 112 were initiated state statutes, like Proposition 212.
Proposition 145 officially blocked from ballot
The Supreme Court, in a separate ruling on Aug. 18, stated that Proposition 145 cannot be placed on the November ballot. The ruling upheld the decision of the Maricopa County Superior Court that blocked the measure from the ballot because it violated the state constitution’s separate amendment rule.
Proposition 145 would have prohibited the state from confiscating money from the scholarship account of a child of a military family. That would include Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Proposition 145 would also have voided any ballot measure or law passed after Nov. 1, 2026, that violates the amendment. This provision would have applied to Proposition 212.
Last month, a court also struck down Arizona Proposition 143, a legislatively referred constitutional amendment. The measure would have barred school districts and their employees from using public money, resources, or working hours to support or promote labor organization activities. It also would have prohibited the state and other political subdivisions from entering into exclusive representation or collective bargaining agreements with any labor organization.
Since 2014, Arizona courts have removed four ballot measures from the ballot: two legislatively referred constitutional amendments in 2026, a citizen-initiated statute in 2022, and a veto referendum in 2022.
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