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In a brief order Friday, the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Supreme Court declined to block election officials from counting the votes for and against Proposition 140.

The measure already is on ballots. They had to go to the printer in late August to ensure early ballots could be sent out next Wednesday and others are available for on-site voting through Election Day, Nov. 5.

But initiative foes sought a court order to keep the votes from being tallied, because at the time of ballot printing there still was no final legal resolution to their argument there weren’t enough valid signatures on petitions to qualify for the ballot.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Frank Moskowitz declined, citing three alternate legal reasons of why that was not an option. That sent the case to the state’s high court.

In Friday’s order Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer said the court reviewed the arguments, concluded Moskowitz is correct, and dismissed the challenge.

Timmer did not say which of the three theories she and her colleagues found to be persuasive, saying only that “an opinion explaining the court’s reasoning will follow in due course.’’

The measure, if approved, would outlaw public funding for partisan primaries at any level of government where each party gets to nominate candidates for various offices.

In place of partisan primaries would be a single nonpartisan primary in which all candidates from all parties, or no party at all, run against each other. All registered voters could participate regardless of political affiliation.

Then the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, would advance to the general election.

It also would allow the Legislature to permit up to five candidates to be on the ballot, however. In that case, the initiative would require use of a ranked-choice system where voters rate their candidates in order of preference and multiple rounds of counting and elimination could be needed before someone gets to the required 50% and is declared the winner.

Opponents’ argument

Friday’s ruling came despite the legal efforts of the business-oriented ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Free Enterprise Club.

Its attorneys presented evidence to Moskowitz that 37,657 signatures on petitions to put Proposition 140 on the ballot were duplicates. Deducting those from the totals, which were preliminarily found valid by state and local election officials, would have left the effort short of the 383,923 valid signatures needed.

Moskowitz, however, concluded that once the ballots including Prop. 140 went to the printer at the end of August, that ended the matter.

After Friday’s high court ruling, a disappointed Scot Mussi, president of the Free Enterprise Club, said: “Our organization proved that the special interest groups attempting to hijack ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s elections systems lacked the minimum number to qualify for the ballot to even be considered by voters in November.â€�

Mussi also contended, though offered no proof, that the backers, operating under the banner of Make Elections Fair, were aware of the duplicates and that their signature gathering effort had fallen short.

“Yet they obstructed and delayed the review of the duplicate signatures for over a month,’’ he said, essentially guaranteeing that there would be no final resolution before the ballot printing deadline.

Chuck Coughlin, who is managing the Proposition 140 campaign, had a simpler reaction: “We won,’’ he said.

“Too late to continue litigating�

Yet to be disclosed is exactly why the Supreme Court decided that voters will get the last word.

Moskowitz, likely anticipating a challenge to his ruling that the printing of the ballots made the whole case moot, included two other legal theories that the justices could use to uphold his decision to let voters decide.

One goes to the question of whether there were enough signatures.

Backers turned in about 575,000 signatures. But a preliminary review of petitions and signatures by state and local election officials concluded 409,474 were valid.

That led foes to hire an outside firm to go through the signatures where, according to testimony presented in court, they found nearly 40,000 were duplicates where people had signed at least twice. Moskowitz said they proved their case for 37,657 of those, a calculation which, on paper, would leave the initiative drive short.

But he accepted the argument by a statistical expert hired by Make Elections Fair that deducting the duplicate signatures after some had likely already been removed by the state and county would amount to “double counting’’ the bad signatures. He said that was a basis to toss the challenge.

And Moskowitz proffered an ultimate fall-back position. He said even if there were not enough valid signatures, and even if the ballot printing did not make the case moot, there is nothing in state law that would allow him — or the Supreme Court — to do what the Free Enterprise Club was asking: To tell county election officials not to tally the votes for or against Proposition 140 and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes not to include the totals in the official state canvass.

Fontes, in his own legal filing, said he was not taking a position on the initiative.

“But it is too late to continue litigating whether this initiative qualifies for the ballot given the fact that ballots for more than half the state, and all information relating to this measure for the publicity pamphlet, have already gone to the printer,’’ Fontes, a Democrat, said through his lawyers from the Attorney General’s Office.

Similar arguments were submitted by Sen. Ken Bennett, who formerly was secretary of state, and Helen Purcell, who had been the Maricopa County recorder. Both are Republicans.

Pro campaign has nearly $7 million

The latest campaign finance reports show supporters of Prop. 140 have collected more than $6.9 million.

There is $600,000 from Robson Walton, a former chairman of the board of directors of Walmart who lives in Scottsdale.

David Tedesco, CEO of Outlier, and Robert Bertrand, founder of Concord Servicing Corp., each gave $500,000. Both also were active in supporting Proposition 211, the successful 2022 measure designed to force the disclosure of “dark money’’ in campaign spending.

Another $500,000 is listed as coming from Mary Bernal, who is listed as a trustee of the Brown Foundations that provide various grants.

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥an Sarah Smallhouse, who chairs the Make Elections Fair Committee, gave $365,00. She is president of the Brown Foundations.

Opponents have not filed any financial disclosure reports.