Voters in Nebraska and Arizona will see competing measures on their November ballots — in one case about abortion, in the other about primary elections. If voters approve them all, what happens next could be up to the courts to decide.
Like more than a dozen other states, Arizona and Nebraska have constitutions stating that if two or more conflicting ballot measures are approved at the same election, the measure receiving the most affirmative votes prevails.
That sounds simple. But it’s actually a bit more complicated.
That’s because the Arizona and Nebraska constitutions apply the most-votes rule to the specifically conflicting provisions within each measure — opening the door to legal challenges in which a court must decide which provisions conflict and whether some parts of each measure can take effect.
The scenario may may sound odd. But it’s not unheard of.
Conflicting ballot measures “arise frequently enough, and the highest-vote rule is applied frequently enough that it merits some consideration,” said Michael Gilbert, vice dean of the University of Virginia School of Law, who analyzed conflicting ballot measures as a graduate student two decades ago when his curiosity was peaked by competing measures in California.