Court ruling OKs petitions, clears way for universal health-care vote

Arizonans will get to decide in November whether they want to constitutionally preclude the state from imposing a universal health-care program.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Mark Aceto ruled Thursday that 22 signatures originally declared invalid on the petitions for Proposition 101 should be counted. Those 22 were from a random sample of 5 percent of all names checked by the Maricopa County Recorder's Office.

Those 22 names extrapolate out to 440 more signatures which now have to be considered valid. And that is enough to show that the petition drive collected at least 95 percent of the 230,047 signatures necessary - the point at which the measure is presumed to be qualified for the ballot.

Deputy County Attorney Colleen Connor defended the decision of County Recorder Helen Purcell to disqualify the signatures in the first place.

She said the 22 names in question all had either the wrong date or an incomplete date on which each person signed the petitions. Connor said state law specifically requires Purcell not to count these.

But Aceto said all he legally has to conclude is that there is evidence of the date the petition actually was signed and that each signer was a registered voter on that date.

For example, one petition was listed as being signed "8/08/08.''

Andrew Chavez, owner of Petition Partners, the firm hired by backers of the initiative, testified that was not possible as the petitions were turned in to the Secretary of State's Office before the July 3, 2008, deadline. And Chavez noted that dates listed for signatures above and below the one questioned all showed "4/8/08.''

There also were some signatures collected in January where the signer listed the year as 2007, before the petitions were even on the street.

Thursday's ruling is a major victory for the backers of the campaign, headed by two Arizona doctors.

Proposition 101, if approved in November, would bar enactment of any law that would require people to enroll in health-care or health-insurance programs or to have to contribute to such programs for refusing to participate.

That is similar to a "play or pay'' law enacted in Massachusetts. Employers either must provide health-care coverage to their workers in line with state mandates or pay a fee to the state.

Closer to home, Arizona House Minority Leader Phil Lopes, D-Tucson, has proposed a universal health- care plan that would pool everything being spent by all parties on health care - including government, business and individuals - to set up a plan where everyone gets the same basic coverage. Lopes has pegged the cost at close to $3 billion.

That clearly would be forbidden under the terms of the initiative, which would bar the passage of any law, by the Legislature or voters, "that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private health-care systems or private plans of any type.''

Eric Novack, a Phoenix orthopedic surgeon, said backers of the initiative are not necessarily opposed to universal health care. "We just think that health-care reform has to have the rights that we lay out in our initiative protected,'' he said. "Health care-reform can be built on top of these rights.''