Arizona voters soundly rejected the state’s Prop 121 initiative which would exclude all but the top two vote-getters in the primary of state elections from the general election. No votes outnumbered Yes votes by two to one.

Similar initiatives that passed in prior election years in Washington, Louisiana and California have been destructive to the LP in those states. In some cases, it has resulted in allowing only one party’s candidates to be on the general election ballot.

This defeat of Top Two stops a dangerous trend and signals an intolerance on the part of voters to exclude challengers to the status quo. Arizona is the second state where Top Two has gone down at the polls. A similar initiative in Oregon lost in 2008.