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But Scottsdale Rep. Alexander Kolodin also acknowledges that the fact there’s now a Democrat in the top office — and a prior GOP advantage has disappeared — has at least something to do with his new proposal to change the system.

His House Bill 2045 would require that the order of candidates for each race on the general election ballot be rotated among voting precincts in each county so that each party gets an equal chance of being in the first position.

The current system — the one based on who won the last governor’s race — meant that in the 2022 election Republicans were listed ahead of Democrats in all races in 11 of the state’s 15 counties where Republican Doug Ducey outpolled Democrat David Garcia for governor. That included Maricopa County, which has more voters than the other 14 counties combined.

The Democratic National Committee and its allies thought that system so unfair that they filed suit in 2019 asking a federal judge to rule it illegal.

To back their arguments, they cited research from a political science professor who estimated that first-listed candidates get an average advantage of 2.2 percentage points. The margin can reach 5.6 percentage points, said that professor, Jonathan Rodden.

That explains why ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ law requires rotation of names on primary election ballots, said Democrats’ attorney Sarah Gonski. She urged U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa to extend that rotation to general elections.

The judge declined, and the DNC had no better luck going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But now, Kolodin says they have a point.

“It provides statistical advantage to the group of candidates listed first,’’ he said Wednesday — exactly what the Democrats were arguing in court.

So what’s changed?

One thing is that Democrat Katie Hobbs beat Republican Kari Lake in the 2022 gubernatorial race. That meant Democrats got top billing in the 2024 election in five counties, including Maricopa and Pima, where three out of every four registered voters reside.

That would be repealed, and replaced by the system of random rotation, if the Republican-controlled Legislature approves Kolodin’s plan and the governor signs it.

Kolodin conceded there is some political motivation behind his move to have the Legislature revamp the law versus having it decided by a federal judge.

He said Humetewa was right in concluding it was not the role of the courts to make such decisions.

That’s the role of the Legislature, he said, which then — and now — has been controlled by Republicans.

“The Legislature saw fit to, fairly in my view, provide that advantage to the party that had won the governor’s office,’’ he said of the law in place when Ducey won his races for governor.

Put another way, Kolodin said, Republican lawmakers had every right to set up a system designed to benefit their candidates.

“It’s not fair to take that advantage away from a political party in the middle of a gubernatorial term,’’ he said, saying the GOP, having won 11 counties in 2018, including Maricopa, was entitled to “get the prize’’ of first position in future elections.

“And you get to keep that prize for the four years,’’ Kolodin said.

Anyway, he said, it’s not like he’s trying to take away the current Democratic advantage — at least not right away.

“It doesn’t take effect until 2027,’’ he said.

What that means, he said, is that even if his measure becomes law, Democratic candidates still will be listed first in the five affected counties for the upcoming election. That’s the one in which Hobbs herself will be up for a new term.

But it will make irrelevant beyond that, at least for ballot order, whether she wins or loses.