2026 Ballot Measures
Measures can be added to our ballots through two avenues:
1. Citizens Initiatives
Arizona voters have the power to initiate legislation as a state statute or a constitutional amendment. We can also repeal legislation through veto referendum.
On Your Ballot This November!
Protect Education Act
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VOTE YES
in November
When qualified and passed, the Act would protect students and stop fraud in the ESA voucher program. Includes:
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Mandatory background checks for school staff working with kids and ensure all schools meet basic safety standards.
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Require transparency and reporting to prevent fraud and ensure proper use of public funds
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Ban the use of ESA voucher funds on non-educations expenses such as diamond jewelry, big screen TVs, or luxury vacations.
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Limit the maximum family income for the ESA voucher program to $150,000 or less, adjusted annually for inflation at the same rate as school funding. Students with disabilities are exempt from the income cap.
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Stop stockpiling of taxpayer funds in private savings accounts by requiring all unused ESA voucher funds be returned.
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Require all voucher-funded schools to be accredited or administer a nationally-recognized assessment. Students with disabilities are exempt from assessment provisions.
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Find a place to sign.
2. State Legislature
The Arizona State Legislature may place measures on the ballot as legislatively referred constitutional amendments or legislatively referred state statutes. In addition, the Arizona Commission on Salaries for Elective State Officers is one of only a few state committees that have the power to place measures on the ballot.
Either chamber of the Arizona State Legislature is allowed to propose a constitutional amendment. A majority of members of both chambers must approve it. If they do, the proposed amendment goes on a statewide ballot for a popular vote of the people. Approval from a simple majority of voters is then required to make it part of the constitution.
Vote NO on These Referrals On Your Ballot This November
Thank you to Civic Education Beyond Voting for the information on these referrals.
Defunding Clean Elections Through Photo Radar Cuts
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Proposition Number Pending
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Plan to VOTE NO!
SCR1004 (Rogers, R-7) would ask voters to ban cities across Arizona from using photo radar unless a city votes every 10 years to approve it. Traffic radar reduces crashes and injuries by 35%; repealing it means more dangerous roads and more collisions. Far-right extremists' excuse for doing this is that they call photo radar “totalitarianism” and “mass surveillance,” but the real reason is that it's a back-door way to defund the voter-created Citizens Clean Elections Commission, which they and their dark-money backers have long hated. In Arizona, photo radar fines levy a mandatory 10% surcharge for Clean Elections, which provides public funding to candidates who agree to forgo private or special-interest money.
HCR2001 (Kolodin, R-3) is purposely designed to kill Arizona's early voting system by requiring all voters — even those voting mail ballots — to somehow show government-issued ID before casting a ballot. The bill doesn't say how or when early voters must provide this ID. Would we have to include a photocopy of our ID with their early ballot? Who knows! Do we write our driver license number on our ballot, violating voter privacy? That wouldn't take place "before" we cast our ballot, so probably not! Worse, this bill now allows early and mail voting only if it's "reasonably connected to a legitimate state interest," vague language that will give election deniers broad grounds to sue at significant public expense.
HCR2003 (Bliss, R-1) would ostracize the tiny minority of trans girls in Arizona by asking voters to exclude them from girls' youth sports leagues and facilities, overriding any parental permission the girls have been given to participate. Anyone could sue if they suspect a trans girl was included. This is a blanket ban that treats kindergarteners the same as college athletes, and bowling the same as football. Our students deserve rules that promote sports fairness, taking age and sports type into consideration, not blanket bans like this one.
HCR2007 (Gress, R-4) is designed to micromanage and cripple public district schools (but not charter or private ESA voucher-funded schools). The measure asks voters to force public schools to spend at least 60% of their funding on “direct instructional expenses” or have the difference withheld by the state. This is an impossible benchmark that schools have not met at any point since 2003 when the Auditor General’s Office began monitoring the number. Why? "Direct instructional expenses" only covers teachers, some aides, instructional supplies, field trips and athletics — a narrow definition that doesn’t address all the other pieces required to make a kid’s school day work. This excludes librarians, custodians, counselors, teacher training, technology, building maintenance and repair, groundskeeping, security, accounting and payroll, air conditioning, insurance, food service, buses, and all the clerical staff that make any school (or large corporation) run. Republicans love to use "top-heavy administrative spending" as a false flag to aggressively undermine support for public schools. In fact, Arizona has among the lowest administrative costs in the nation.
HCR2040 (Olson, R-10) aims to legislate away teacher's unions by creating a slew of new limits on how educators can collectively organize and bargain, something which creates better working conditions for teachers and better learning conditions for students. The measure would ban teachers from deducting their union dues directly through payroll (which only happens at teachers' requests) in a blatant attempt to shrink membership. It would also prohibit districts from using any public resources to support labor organizations, which means school facilities couldn’t be used to host union meetings — even when rented like other clubs or organizations — or even allow union members to have a presence at events like new teacher orientations. Incredibly, Republican lawmakers stated they were advancing the measure to keep public monies from being used to support private organizations — right after they'd passed HCR2048 (see below).
HCR2044 (Montenegro, R-29) asks voters to enshrine racism in the state Constitution. This culture-war-driven measure would block teachers from discussing accurate history, censor certain content from being taught in schools, and ban trainings on how to support LGBTQ+ staff and students. It would also allow the legislature to "prescribe related practices or concepts" to ban — in other words, to forbid any conceivable notion that conspiracy theorists propagate, and claim they already have voter approval to do it.
Attack on Protect Education Citizens' Initiative!
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Proposition Number Pending
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Plan to VOTE NO!
HCR2048 (Way, R-15) is a last-minute striker that asks voters to constitutionally override the Protect Ed initiative, along with any future ESA voucher reforms. This Trojan-horse measure uses military families as political pawns to enshrine vouchers in the state Constitution, forever killing any reform that would return funds to the state. If voters approve both this and Protect Ed, Protect Ed would fail — even if it gets more votes — because Protect Ed is a statutory law and this constitutional amendment would override it. When asked if Republicans were running this measure because they failed to reach a deal to kick Protect Ed off the ballot, John Kavanagh (R-3) flat-out admitted, “That's the reason why we're running this.”
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One measure from last year would designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations, if approved by voters.
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Another measure would prohibit the state, and all municipalities, from imposing a mileage-based tax on vehicles.
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Lastly, lawmakers added a measure in 2025 which bans municipalities from taxing groceries above 2%.