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      Kari Lake: Arizona judge throws out challenge to defeat in governor race

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      Kari Lake: Arizona judge throws out challenge to defeat in governor raceTrump supporter has refused to concede to Democrat Katie Hobbs but Maricopa judge says no evidence of misconduct A judge on Saturday threw out Republican Kari Lake’s challenge of her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race to the Democrat Katie Hobbs, rejecting her claim that problems with ballot printers at some polling places on election day were the result of intentional misconduct.January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did itRead moreThe Maricopa county superior court judge, Peter Thompson, who was appointed by then-Republican governor Jan Brewer, said the court did not find clear and convincing evidence of the widespread misconduct Lake alleged affected the result of the 2022 election. Lake will appeal, she said.Lake’s witnesses did not have any personal knowledge of intentional misconduct, the judge said, adding: “The court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence.”Lake, who lost by more than 17,000 votes, was among the most vocal Republican midterm candidates promoting Donald Trump’s election fraud lie. While most other election deniers conceded after losing in November, Lake has not. Instead, she asked the judge to either declare her the winner or order a revote in Maricopa county.Judge Thompson acknowledged the “anger and frustration” of voters who were inconvenienced but noted that setting aside the results of an election “has never been done in the history of the United States”.“This court’s duty is not solely to incline an ear to public outcry,” he said. “It is to subject plaintiff’s claims and defendants’ actions to the light of the courtroom and scrutiny of the law.”Lawyers for Lake focused on problems with ballot printers at some polling places in Maricopa county, home to more than 60% of Arizona voters. The defective printers produced ballots that were too light to be read by on-site tabulators. Lines backed up in some areas, amid confusion.County officials say everyone had a chance to vote and all ballots were counted, since ballots affected by the printers were taken to more sophisticated counters at elections department headquarters. They are in the process of investigating the cause of the printer problems.Lake’s attorneys claimed the chain of custody for ballots was broken at an off-site facility, where a contractor scans mail ballots to prepare them for processing. They claimed workers put their own mail ballots into the pile, rather than sending their ballots through normal channels, and also that paperwork documenting the transfer of ballots was missing. The county disputes the claim.Lake faced extremely long odds in her challenge, needing to prove not only that misconduct occurred but also that it was intended to deny her victory and did result in the wrong woman being declared the winner.Her attorneys pointed to a witness who examined ballots on behalf of her campaign and discovered 14 that had 19in (48cm) images of the ballot printed on 20in paper, meaning the ballots wouldn’t be read by a tabulator. The witness insisted someone changed those printer configurations, a claim disputed by elections officials.County officials say the ballot images were slightly smaller as a result of a shrink-to-fit feature being selected on a printer by a tech employee looking for solutions to election day issues. They say about 1,200 ballots were affected and that those ballots were duplicated so they could be read and counted.A pollster testified on behalf of Lake, claiming technical problems disenfranchised enough voters that it would have changed the outcome of the race. But an expert called to testify by election officials said there was no evidence to back up the claim that 25,000 to 40,000 people who would normally have voted did not cast ballots as a result of election day problems.A witness called on behalf of Lake acknowledged that that people who had their vote rejected by tabulators or ballot-on-demand printers – an occurrence for many voters – could still cast a ballot and have it counted.“The BOD printer failures did not actually affect the results of the election,” the judge said.Thompson previously dismissed eight of 10 claims Lake raised in her lawsuit. Among those was the allegation that Hobbs, as secretary of state, and the Maricopa county recorder, Stephen Richer, engaged in censorship by flagging social media posts with election misinformation for possible removal by Twitter.Thompson also dismissed Lake’s claims of discrimination against Republicans and that mail-in voting procedures are illegal.Hobbs takes office as governor on 2 January.On Friday, another judge dismissed the Republican Abraham Hamadeh’s challenge of results in his race against the Democrat Kris Mayes for state attorney general. The court concluded that Hamadeh, who finished 511 votes behind Mayes and has not conceded, did not prove the errors in vote counting he alleged.A court hearing is scheduled on Thursday to present results of recounts in the races for attorney general, state superintendent and a state legislative seat.TopicsArizonaRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Arizona to remove wall of shipping containers on Mexico border

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      Arizona to remove wall of shipping containers on Mexico borderState to dismantle wall following lawsuit filed by US government alleging it was illegally built on federal lands Arizona will remove a wall of shipping containers along the state’s 370-mile border with Mexico following a lawsuit filed by the US government against the state that claimed that the makeshift wall is being illegally built on federal lands.Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates in final days of officeRead moreAccording to an agreement reached late Wednesday between federal and state authorities, Arizona will dismantle the wall, along with all related equipment by the beginning of next year.“By January 4, 2023, to the extent feasible and so as not to cause damage to United States’ lands, properties, and natural resources, Arizona will remove all previously installed shipping containers and associated equipment, materials, vehicles,” said the agreement.In August, Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, signed an executive order that directed a state agency to close the gaps in the border, saying: “Arizona has had enough … The Biden administration’s lack of urgency on border security is a dereliction of duty.”“Our border communities are being used as the entryway to the United States, overwhelming law enforcement, hospitals, nonprofits and residents. It’s our responsibility to protect our citizens and law enforcement from this unprecedented crisis,” he added.Wednesday’s agreement comes two weeks before Arizona’s Democratic governor-elect, Katie Hobbs, is scheduled to take office. Hobbs has criticized the wall’s construction, saying: “I am very concerned about the liability to the state of Arizona for those shipping containers that they’re putting on federal land. There’s pictures of people climbing on top of them. I think that’s a huge liability and risk.”‘No money, nowhere to stay’: asylum seekers wait as Trump’s border restrictions drag onRead moreLast week, the federal government filed a lawsuit against Ducey and the rest of the state, requesting for the removal of the containers in remote San Rafael valley in the state’s easternmost Cochise county.“Officials from Reclamation and the Forest Service have notified Arizona that it is trespassing on federal lands,” said the complaint, adding, “This action also seeks damages for Arizona’s trespasses, to compensate the United States for any actions it needs to take to undo Arizona’s actions and to remediate – to the extent possible – any injuries to the United States’ properties and interests.”The complaint, filed by the justice department on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Agriculture and the Forest Services, went on to cite the federal government’s operational and environmental concerns towards the makeshift wall. The $95m project of placing up to 3,000 containers along the border is approximately a third complete.The US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, criticized the project, saying that it “is not an effective barrier, it poses safety hazards to both the public and those working in the area and has significantly damaged public land”.“We need serious solutions at our border, with input from local leaders and communities. Stacking shipping containers is not a productive solution,” he added.In a statement released on Thursday and reported by CNN, Ducey spokesperson CJ Karamargin said: “Finally, after the situation on our border has turned into a full blown crisis, they’ve decided to act. Better late than never. We’re working with the federal government to ensure they can begin construction of this barrier with the urgency this problem demands.”TopicsArizonaUS-Mexico borderUS immigrationUS domestic policyUS politicsBiden administrationRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans lead charge to ban noncitizens from voting in local elections

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      Republicans lead charge to ban noncitizens from voting in local electionsEight states have passed laws against ballot access, even as some progressive cities are extending local voting rights Louisiana voters recently approved a constitutional amendment barring anyone who is not a US citizen from participating in elections, becoming the eighth state to push back against the growing number of progressive cities deciding to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.Conservative donors pour ‘dark money’ into case that could upend US voting lawRead moreWhile noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections and no states allow noncitizens to vote for statewide office, ambiguous language in constitutions has allowed localities to pass statutes legalizing noncitizen voting in local or school board elections. A short but expanding list of cities include two cities in Vermont, almost a dozen in Maryland, and San Francisco.Other cities are trying to join that list, including Boston and Washington DC, where the latter city’s council in October passed legislation allowing noncitizens who have lived in the city for at least 30 days to vote in local elections. New York City’s council also passed a measure in December to allow close to 900,000 green card holders and those with work authorization to vote in local elections, but a state trial court struck it down in June, finding it violated the state constitution. The ruling is currently being appealed.The potential for major cities like DC and New York to expand their electorates prompted backlash from Republican lawmakers.“This vote sends a clear message that the radical election policies of places like San Francisco, New York City and Washington, DC have no place in Louisiana,” Kyle Ardoin, the Republican secretary of state, said in a statement after the passage of the constitutional amendment, which he said will “ensure the continued integrity of Louisiana’s elections”.Louisiana law already prohibits anyone who is “not a citizen of the state” from voting, so voting rights advocates say the new amendment is an effort by Republicans in the state to limit voting based on false allegations that noncitizens are committing voter fraud by participating in elections.Louisiana’s amendment made it on to the 10 December ballot after it was passed by both chambers of the state legislature. Over 73% of Louisiana voters approved it, making Louisiana the latest in a series of states moving to explicitly write bans into their constitutions.Before 2020, just Arizona and North Dakota specifically prohibited noncitizens from voting in local and state elections, but voters in Alabama, Colorado and Florida all approved constitutional amendments in 2020 and Ohio approved one in November.Ohio’s amendment came after one town in the state, Yellow Springs, passed an initiative in 2019 to allow noncitizens to vote, giving voting rights in local elections to just a few dozen people in the small town. A few years later in 2022, Republican lawmakers proposed what would eventually become the constitutional amendment banning the practice and revoking the right from noncitizens in Yellow Springs.Fulvia Vargas-De Leon, senior counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a New York-based immigrant rights group, said the movement for ballot amendments is just one way that some lawmakers are trying to restrict voting rights.“It is a response to the expansion of the right to vote, and our concern is that since 2020, we’ve seen such attacks on the right to vote,” she said, adding that the pushback was coming because of an anti-immigrant sentiment “but also a larger effort to try to ban who has access to the ballot”.The United States allowed noncitizens to vote for much of its early history. From the founding of the country through 1926, noncitizens could vote in local, state and federal elections. But anti-immigrant sentiment led to lawmakers in most states to push for an end to the practice.“Resurgent nativism, wartime xenophobia, and corruption concerns pushed lawmakers to curtail noncitizen voting, and citizenship became a voting prerequisite in every state by 1926,” William & Mary professor Alan H Kennedy wrote in a paper published in the Journal of Policy History this year.In 1996, Congress passed a law prohibiting noncitizens from voting in federal elections, making illegal voting punishable by fines, imprisonment and deportation.But on the local level, the subject has re-emerged as a topic for debate in recent decades, as the populations of permanent noncitizen immigrants has grown in many cities.Advocates for noncitizen voting argue that documented immigrants pay taxes and contribute to their local communities and should have their voices heard when it comes to local policy.“We should have a representative democracy, where everyone who is part of the fabric of the community, who is involved, who pays taxes, should have a say in it,” said Vargas-De Leon, whose group intervened in the New York litigation and has filed the appeal.But conservative groups say that allowing noncitizens to vote dilutes the votes of citizens. Republican strategist Christopher Arps started the Missouri-based Americans for Citizen Voting to help states amend their constitutions to explicitly say that only US citizens can vote. He said that people who want to vote should “at least have some skin in the game” by completing the citizenship process.“We’ve been hearing for the past five, six years about foreign interference, Russia and other countries,” he said. “Well to me, this is a type of foreign interference in our elections.”It would also be a “bureaucratic nightmare”, he said, for states to have to maintain two separate voter rolls for federal and local elections, and could lead to illegal voting if noncitizens accidentally vote in a federal election.Though noncitizen voting still has not been signed into law in DC, Republicans in Congress have already introduced legislation to block it. One bill, introduced by the Texas senator Ted Cruz last month, would bar DC from using federal funds to facilitate noncitizen voting.“Allowing noncitizens and illegal immigrants to vote in our elections opens our country up to foreign influence, and allows those who are openly violating US law or even working for hostile foreign governments to take advantage and direct our resources against our will,” Cruz said in a statement.But Vargas-De Leon pointed to the benefits of expanding the electorate to include the country’s 12.9 million legal permanent residents and other documented immigrants.“All we’re trying to do here is ensure that everyone has a say in our government,” she said.TopicsUS newsThe fight for democracyUS politicsLaw (US)LouisianaOhioFloridaVermontfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Kari Lake Will Present Election Fraud Claims in an Arizona County Court

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      After a judge dismissed most of her claims, two will go forward. Lawyers expect she will have to clear a high bar, and her case relies on a collection of election deniers.Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona who made false election claims the centerpiece of her campaign, is starting a two-day trial on Wednesday as she presses to have her loss overturned.Ms. Lake lost by around 17,000 votes to Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state, but sued Maricopa County and Ms. Hobbs to overturn the results under Arizona’s election contest statutes. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge is allowing two of her claims of misconduct by election officials to go forward, but eight other claims were dismissed. A ruling is likely soon afterward.In a separate election case in Mohave County, the Republican candidate for attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, will present evidence on Friday. The November election ended with Mr. Hamadeh trailing Kris Mayes, the Democratic nominee, by 511 votes, within the margin that requires a mandatory statewide recount that is going on now.Lawyers for Ms. Hobbs and Maricopa County have been warning that such trials could become a free-for-all for election conspiracy theorists. Ms. Lake has indicated that she may call as witnesses people who have been pushing false or misleading claims related to Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election.There is, however, a high bar to proving election misconduct that could have swayed the results.“The court has given an opportunity to put them to the test,” said Abha Khanna, a lawyer for Ms. Hobbs. “If you think you have proof something happened and that proof doesn’t exist, and they’re not able to prove it in this court, I hope we could put to bed the idea that there’s something lurking out there.”The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      US government sues Arizona over shipping container wall on Mexico border

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      US government sues Arizona over shipping container wall on Mexico borderThe complaint claims that the state of Arizona is trespassing on federal lands and says the US is entitled to compensation The US government sued Arizona governor Doug Ducey and the state on Wednesday over the placement of shipping containers as a barrier on the border with Mexico, saying it is trespassing on federal lands.The complaint filed in the US district court comes three weeks before the Republican governor steps aside for Democratic governor-elect Katie Hobbs, who has said she opposes the construction.Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates in final days of officeRead moreThe complaint by the US justice department asks the court that Arizona be ordered to halt placement and remove the containers in remote San Rafael valley in easternmost Cochise county. The work placing up to 3,000 containers at a cost of $95m (£76m) is about a third complete, but protesters concerned about its impact on the environment have held up work in recent days.“Officials from Reclamation and the Forest Service have notified Arizona that it is trespassing on federal lands,” the complaint reads. The action also seeks damages to compensate the US to fix any damage along the border.The justice department sued on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service it oversees.The US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, said in a statement from Washington that the project “is not an effective barrier, it poses safety hazards to both the public and those working in the area and has significantly damaged public land”.Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates | First ThingRead more“We need serious solutions at our border, with input from local leaders and communities. Stacking shipping containers is not a productive solution,” Vilsack said.Ducey told US officials earlier this week that Arizona stands ready to help remove the containers, which he says were placed as a temporary barrier. But he wants the US government to say when it will fill any remaining gaps in the permanent border wall as it announced it would a year ago.The US “owes it to Arizonans and all Americans to release a timeline”, he wrote in a letter on Tuesday, responding to news of the pending federal complaint.Border security was a focus of Donald Trump’s presidency and remains a key issue for Republican politicians.The complaint was applauded by US representative Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat who represents southern Arizona. He called the project an “illegal junkyard border wall”.Russ McSpadden, south-west conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal complaint “should be the beginning of the end of Doug Ducey’s lawless assault on protected national forestlands and endangered wildlife”.The Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsArizonaUS politicsUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More

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      In Congress, Party Switching Cuts Both Ways

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      If history is any guide, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the latest lawmaker to change her stripes, faces an uncertain future.WASHINGTON — When Phil Gramm, a conservative House member from Texas, left the Democratic Party in 1983, he immediately quit Congress and forced a special election that he won as a newly minted Republican six weeks later. He called his leave-and-start-from-scratch approach the “only honorable course of action,” since voters had elected him as a Democrat.Arlen Specter, a longtime centrist Republican senator from Pennsylvania, was blunt when he suddenly became a Democrat after backing some Obama administration initiatives in 2009. He said he had consulted his political strategist and been informed that polls showed he could not win a Republican primary; hence, he needed to switch parties if he was to have any hope of political survival. He lost anyway, suffering defeat in a Democratic primary the next year.Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who left the Democratic Party and proclaimed herself an independent last week, was less transparent about her move. She dismissed any suggestion that she had made it to better position herself for a 2024 re-election bid after angering Arizona Democrats by regularly bucking her party, even though poll numbers in the state clearly indicate that she would have a difficult time winning a Democratic primary.Though she asked Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, to allow her to keep her committee slots on the Democratic side of the aisle, she refused to say she would align with Democrats, like two other Senate independents, Senators Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. She didn’t even want Democrats declaring that they still retained their new 51-to-49 majority, though that is clearly the result for Senate organizational purposes at the moment.Mr. Schumer on Tuesday even dared to utter those numbers.“Senator Sinema asked me to keep her committees and that keeps the Senate committees functioning in a 51-49 vein, and that’s what we want to do,” he said.The switch was another drama-filled episode featuring the enigmatic first-term senator. Democrats are hoping that once the immediate moment passes, Ms. Sinema will continue to work with them for the next two years as she has on numerous major pieces of legislation over the past two years, and that little will change except the letter after her name signifying her partisan affiliation.“She’s always been independent,” said Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who has teamed up with Ms. Sinema in multiple bipartisan “gangs” to strike deals on issues such as gun control and infrastructure. “She’s been an effective legislator, and I will continue working with her.”A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Divided Government: What does a split Congress mean for the next two years? Most likely a return to gridlock that could lead to government shutdowns and economic turmoil.Kyrsten Sinema: The Arizona senator said that she would leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent, just days after the Democrats secured an expanded majority in the Senate.A Looming Clash: Congressional leaders have all but abandoned the idea of acting to raise the debt ceiling before Democrats lose control of the House, punting the issue to a new Congress.First Gen Z Congressman: In the weeks after his election, Representative-elect Maxwell Frost of Florida, a Democrat, has learned just how different his perspective is from that of his older colleagues.But Democrats are also keeping a wary eye. Any further move away from the party by Ms. Sinema could thrust them back into the 50-50 split they were so thrilled to escape with the re-election of Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia last week, only to have Ms. Sinema rain on their victory parade days later.Then there is Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who has his own 2024 re-election difficulties ahead. Mr. Manchin assured reporters this week that he had no plans to join Ms. Sinema in the stripes-changing camp, but also said he could not predict the future — a comment no doubt duly noted by his Democratic colleagues.While Mr. Warner is correct that Ms. Sinema has always been independent, her change of affiliation does offer her some distance from her old party if she wants to emphasize it. Both Republicans and Democrats will be watching to see if that translates into a new approach. She said in interviews, an op-ed and a video statement that she does not intend to operate any differently than she has to date.“I’m going to keep doing exactly what I do, which is just stay focused on the work and ignore all the noise,” she told CNN.But Republicans will no doubt try to capitalize on her new status. For instance, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, used Twitter to urge the new independent to insist that Senate committees be evenly divided instead of the one-seat advantage Democrats are expecting to have beginning in January.“Now Sen Sinema is independent & she correctly states ppl tired of partisanship,” he said in a tweet. “One step she cld take even though she won’t caucus w Republicans is push to keep equal party numbers on committees like this congress. That wld result in more bipartisanship.”Such a move by Ms. Sinema, suffice it to say, would be frowned on by Democrats.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, on Tuesday noted his own strong relationship with Ms. Sinema.“She and I talk all the time,” he said. “She has a lot of friends on our side of the aisle, including me, and I think she’s decided she’s genuinely an independent and is charting her own course, and I wish her well.”In her announcement, Ms. Sinema sought to emphasize her independent streak to diminish any criticism that she had played bait and switch with Arizona voters by running as a Democrat only to abandon the party label four years later when it appeared she might not fare well in a party primary.“When I ran for the U.S. Senate, I pledged to be independent and work with anyone to achieve lasting results,” she said.But she ran as a Democrat, benefiting from millions of dollars in party spending, and some Arizonans clearly feel cheated, judging by the swell of attacks on her emanating from the state. Mr. Schumer and other Democrats say it is way too early to weigh in on whether they would back her or a declared Democrat when 2024 rolls around.Party-switching on Capitol Hill gained steam in the Reagan years as multiple congressional Democrats from the South moved to the Republican side, in line with the sweeping political realignment coursing through the region. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it did not.Representative Bill Grant, a lifelong Democrat from Florida’s conservative Panhandle, was courted by President George H.W. Bush to jump the Democratic ship in 1989 by promising to campaign for him the next year.“This action is not going to change the way I vote,” Mr. Grant promised in an appearance with the president.It did change the way his constituents voted when it came to him. He was defeated by Democrat Pete Peterson the next year after Mr. Peterson, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, accused Mr. Grant of a breach of faith with voters by changing parties midstream.Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who is retiring this year after six terms, became an enthusiastic Republican after the party’s congressional election sweep in 1994, and has survived quite comfortably.“I got the same amount of votes as a Republican as I did as a Democrat,” Mr. Shelby said this week. “I was elected twice as a Democrat and four times as a Republican. I had no compunction about it. I have no regrets.”Ms. Sinema’s political fate is yet to be determined. Democrats just hope she sticks with them in the near future.“I’m sure it was an important and maybe difficult decision for her to make personally,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat. “I am going to work with Kyrsten in her capacity as long as she’s working toward the same goals that I share.” More

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      Kyrsten Sinema Brings Bad Tidings for Democrats in 2024

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      Arizona was on the cusp of seating a Democratic governor alongside two Democratic senators for the first time since 1951 when Senator Kyrsten Sinema abruptly announced last week she is leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent.The move was met with harsh criticism from the left, which saw it as another in a series of self-aggrandizing acts that risk sacrificing the Democratic Party’s power and President Biden’s legislative agenda for her personal benefit.Polls make it clear that Ms. Sinema is reviled by a large segment of her now-former party. In a recent Civiqs poll of likely voters, she was at a meager 7 percent approval among Arizona Democrats. Her switch to declare herself an independent may seem like a desperate act to hold on to the Senate seat she won in 2018 by fewer than three percentage points.It may be that. But for Democrats looking ahead to 2024, her move compounds the difficulties of what is promising to be a brutal Senate map and suggests some hard truths about the party’s chances in Arizona and places like it.The Donald Trump era may have given Democrats in Arizona a bit of a blue mirage. They were very successful in the midterms: Senator Mark Kelly won re-election, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs will be the new governor, and Adrian Fontes will become the secretary of state.But it seems that the Democrats’ success is not simply the result of permanent shifts in Arizona’s demographics. Before Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat, Arizona voted for five consecutive Republican presidential candidates and, before Ms. Sinema’s win in 2018, had not elected a single Democratic senator since 1976. Arizona’s electorate has certainly grown, urbanized and diversified, but registration percentages haven’t changed much since 2012. Today, 35 percent of Arizona registered voters are registered Republicans; 34 percent are Independents; and 31 percent are Democrats.Democrats’ recent victories were presaged by overtly moderate Democratic candidates running against opponents endorsed by Mr. Trump. Ms. Sinema’s path to the Senate was buoyed by her opponent’s irreparably damaging association with Mr. Trump.In announcing her departure from the Democratic Party, Ms. Sinema argued that representing Arizona as an independent will “provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country who also are tired of the partisanship.” She is not wrong on that point: Over a quarter of Americans say they dislike both parties according to Pew Research Center. Only 6 percent said so in 1994.For independent voters, it is disdain for partisanship — not moderate ideology — that drives most of them to buck the party label. A vast majority of independents, 75 to 90 percent, have no trouble identifying their preferred party, and they nearly always vote for it. It is the rancor and incivility associated with partisanship that dissuades independents from publicly showing their true colors.Independent voters are hardly a uniform voting bloc: Generally, they just about evenly divide between those who hold liberal views and usually vote for Democrats and those who are conservative and usually vote for Republicans.The bad news for Ms. Sinema — and perhaps for Democrats — is that independent candidates rarely succeed. Without a sizable Republican or Democratic base, an independent will struggle to cobble together ideologically incompatible voters who are bonded primarily by their reluctance to publicly identify with the party they secretly support.This is one area where the Trump effect has come into play. In recent Arizona elections, the state’s independents have shown that they appear to be more favorable to Democrats than Republicans. In the state’s Senate race, exit polls suggest that independents backed Mr. Kelly over his Trump-endorsed opponent, Blake Masters, by 16 percentage points, and self-identified moderates favored Mr. Kelly by 30 percentage points. Ms. Hobbs similarly won the independent vote against her Trump-endorsed opponent, Kari Lake, by seven percentage points, and she won self-identified moderates by 20 percentage points.Indeed, recent survey data I collected across Arizona shows that independents look much more like Democrats than Republicans when it comes to their disdain for Mr. Trump. Even among those Arizona independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party, 40 percent see the state G.O.P. as “too conservative.”Given repeated Republican losses, it seems that Arizona Republicans — and independents, who have a large say in Arizona’s electoral outcomes — have rejected Mr. Trump as well as his chosen nominees, and this has helped usher in a wave of Democratic candidates, Ms. Sinema included.When a state’s status shifts to swing, it is often attributed to demographic change in the electorate. But in Arizona, that is not likely the case, or at least that isn’t the full story. And this is why the outlook for Democrats might be troubling.Sure, Arizona boasts high population growth in urban areas like Maricopa County. But voter data does not support theories that a transforming electorate is shifting electoral tides. Over time, voter registration percentages have shown Republicans declining slightly but maintaining their numerical advantage.That shift is probably better attributed to changes in the politicians who are running rather than to the people deciding whether to vote for them.If she had remained a Democrat, Ms. Sinema would not be the first politician who faced harsh criticism for frustrating her party, and many of them prevailed in subsequent elections. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are examples.If nothing changes and Ms. Sinema runs for re-election, her former party will be left in a pickle. She probably can’t win as an independent, especially if her popularity doesn’t improve quickly, but a Democrat (like Representative Ruben Gallego, who has hinted at a Senate bid) running against Ms. Sinema and a Republican is also unlikely to win.So for Democrats, Ms. Sinema has made a daunting Senate map in 2024 even worse. There will be 33 Senate seats up for re-election, and Democrats will defend 23 (including Ms. Sinema’s). Three of those seats are in states that Mr. Trump won by at least eight percentage points in 2020: Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.When Republicans in Arizona and other states leave Mr. Trump behind, Democrats will lose this electorally useful foil. States where Democrats enjoyed upset victories against MAGA Republicans might see some of their gains rolled back, especially if the Republican Party rejects Mr. Trump and elevates candidates who better represent more of the party’s voter base.Ms. Sinema’s move has just added another degree of difficulty to a formidable Senate puzzle for Democrats in 2024 — and beyond.Samara Klar is a political scientist at the University of Arizona and an author of “Independent Politics: How Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Two Groups Quietly Spent $32 Million Rallying Voters Behind Voting Rights

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      The money largely went to state and local organizations that often focused on turning out young voters and people of color, including with messages about threats to freedom and democracy.Two organizations quietly spent $32 million in last month’s midterm elections on organizing meant to combat election denialism and promote voting access, according to a progressive strategist behind the effort.The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign put that money into 126 organizations across 16 states, with a particular focus on Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as toward a range of national organizations, some of them left-leaning. The effort also connected donors with key organizations, resulting in an additional $16 million investment, said David Donnelly, the initiative’s lead strategist. The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign did not directly spend on specific candidates or buy advertising, he said. The initiative did, however, engage around retention of Supreme Court justices in Arizona, he said.Mr. Donnelly said the groups invested in organizations that focused in particular on turning out young voters and people of color, two key parts of the Democratic coalition, and often recommended messages about threats to freedom and democracy.“If you roll back the clock to the beginning of this year, there was a lot of ink and pixels spilled about the possibility of democratic collapse, and all that didn’t happen,” Mr. Donnelly said. A number of Republicans who made names for themselves as election deniers lost high-profile races. “It’s not the full story, but you can’t understand why without lifting up some of the groups that were doing organizing and mobilizing in communities of color and among young people.”Mr. Donnelly would not name the donors behind the groups, which as nonprofits are not required to disclose their contributors. Politico first reported on the efforts from Pro-Democracy Center and Pro-Democracy Campaign on Monday.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More