SandCastle Queen works the polls

Queen of the SandCastle just got home from a day of working the primary election today. She reports after a day of seeing the election from the inside, she's not sure she'll go back. I get the feeling that the team lacked organization and was actually something of a Charlie-Foxtrot. Guess I'm not too surprised... I came to that conclusion several years ago after watching a couple of octogenarians take several minutes to locate my name in the rolls (come on folks, it's just not that difficult!). I signed up for vote-by-mail and never looked back.

But the big surprise came as she was reciting the procedures. "... and people registered as other may vote Republican, Democrat, or Green party."

Whhhaaaaaat? There was a recent state supreme court case that supposedly disallowed this. In fact, Arizona used to have a sizeable independent registration. Last time at the ballot box for the presidential preference election, they flat out told people if you want to vote you have to be registered with the party. Most re-registered with a major party so they could vote in the presidential preference election. Today they are saying if you're registered "OTH" you can vote anything except Capitol L Libertarian. I could not believe it (after all, there was that AZSCOTUS Update:US 9th Circuit/US District court case) until she showed me the instruction (Page 27 ):

6) The Board Worker issuing the ballots:
a. Looks up the voter by Register Number in the Precint Register and determines the correct ballot to be issued by looking at the far right hand column for the correct party code. If the party code is OTH, ask the voter if they would like a Republican, Democrat or Green part ballot. Note: if the vother of a declared party they MUST vote that party's ballot. Only if the voter's party code is designated OTH, does the voter have a choice. _However OTH voters may NOT choose a Liberatarian ballot._

Other similar instructions mention the court case.

Dave Hardy - I'm coming to you with this question. What's the story here? Was there another court case between the primary and today or did someone's legal opinion change?

Update: Dave corrects my recollection...

It was the 9th US Circuit Ct of Apps, and then on remand the US Dist Ct. for AZ, that did the job.

Dave went on the explain only the Libertarians objected to non-party members voting in their primary so the law only applies to them. I predict a slow migration back to "OTH" status so people can muck with their opponent's primary process.
Thanks for the correction Dave!