Are Candidate Nomination Petitions With the Wrong Primary Election Date Valid?

By Joseph Kanefield, Eric H. Spencer, and Cole Craghan¹

This week begins the filing period for partisan candidates seeking to run in Arizona’s 2026 primary election to file their nomination petitions. It comes sooner than expected as a new law moves Arizona’s primary election two weeks earlier to allow election officials more time to prepare for the general election.

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs recently signed into law HB 2022,² which, among other things, requires counties to allow political party observers at all voting centers, in-person voting locations and emergency voting locations. Importantly though, the new law also set the primary election date as “the second to last Tuesday in July” in the year in which a general election is held. For 2026, this moved Arizona’s primary election date from August 4, 2026, to July 21, 2026. The law was a bipartisan emergency measure and became effective on February 6, 2026. 

So, what does this mean for state and local candidates who have been circulating nominating petitions for months with the now incorrect August 4, 2026, primary election date on them? The short answer is not much. As a result of session law language included in HB 2022, these candidates’ signatures will count regardless of whether the primary election date in the petition caption is August 4, 2026 or July 21, 2026. 

Thus, candidates (and their consultants) can breathe a collective sigh of relief. 

Petition Signature Validity Under the New Law

For months now, candidates have been circulating their nomination petitions and soliciting voters to sign their petitions online via the Secretary of State’s E-Qual system. Section 7 of HB 2022 directly addresses concerns about petition forms that have been circulated by candidates. The session law states that candidates who collected signatures — including electronic petitions — using forms that reference the former primary election date of August 4, 2026, may lawfully submit those signatures for the newly designated July 21, 2026, primary.

The law mandates that signatures collected with the August 4, 2026, date will not be invalidated “due solely to the changed date of the primary election.” Furthermore, the law explicitly prohibits filing officers from rejecting nomination petitions, nomination papers, or signatures based solely on the date of the primary election appearing on the petition form.

This clarification, however, only creates an exception for the date of August 4, 2026. A petition can still be challenged if, for example, it states a primary election date other than August 4, 2026, or July 21, 2026.

Practical Implications for Candidates

This provision offers substantial protection for candidates who began their signature-gathering campaigns before HB 2022 was signed into law on February 6, 2026. Candidates are not required to discard petitions bearing the old date or restart their collection efforts with updated forms. Similarly, the law clarifies that candidates need not file a new or amended statement of interest based solely on the change in the 2026 primary election date.

Going a step further though, the law does not discriminate between petitions signed before or after the passing of HB 2022. In fact, if a signature is obtained tomorrow (or over the course of the next month) and the petition sheet states a primary date of August 4, 2026 — that signature will still be valid. Thus, if petition signatures otherwise comply with legal requirements, the date discrepancy alone cannot serve as grounds for invalidation.

As a result of the new July 21, 2026, primary election date, the filing period for partisan primary candidates began on February 21, 2026, and ends on March 23, 2026. Importantly, although HB 2022 will allow petitions to be filed with the incorrect August 4, 2026 primary election date, it provides no relief for petitions filed after the new March 23, 2026, deadline.