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      How Adrian Fontes plans to protect Arizona’s elections from ‘Maga fascists’

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      How Adrian Fontes plans to protect Arizona’s elections from ‘Maga fascists’The Democrat who defeated a hard-right extremist in the midterms to be the next secretary of state doesn’t mince words On 5 January, when Adrian Fontes will be inaugurated as the secretary of state of Arizona, there will be no luxuriating over his appointment, no glitzy made-for-media plans for the first 100 days.“I don’t have time for those kinds of things, I’ve just got to get to work,” he said.Conservative donors pour ‘dark money’ into case that could upend US voting lawRead moreThe sense of urgency is understandable. As secretary of state, Fontes will be responsible for overseeing all statewide elections in Arizona. The state found itself at the frontline of efforts to subvert democracy in the wake of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, with Republicans staging a widely derided “audit” of the count and attempting to send fake electors to Washington. That includes federal elections, and with them the 2024 presidential election in which Trump is attempting a comeback. Arizona counties are already preparing for the next battle for the White House, with primary elections to select the two main parties’ nominees only 15 months away.“It’s not that far away. We will have to work at lightning speed,” Fontes said in an interview with the Guardian from his campaign office in Scottsdale, outside the state capital, Phoenix.The US continues to confront the threat to democracy unleashed by Trump in a huge legal campaign after the 2020 presidential election to overturn his defeat and then 2021’s January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.Fontes has more experience dealing with the crisis than most. In November’s midterm elections he fought against, and defeated, Mark Finchem, one of the most notorious election deniers – who was present at the Capitol on 6 January.The contest appeared at times to be unnervingly close, attracting national and international attention. In the end, however, Fontes won with a comfortable margin, taking 52% of the vote to Finchem’s 48%.“We won by about 120,000 votes – we put it away handily,” Fontes said.But the result is not grounds for complacency, Fontes believes. From his perspective, given the scale of the danger posed by Finchem and his ilk, the outcome should have been much clearer.“Our victory was more narrow than we would have liked. We should have won by 20 points, and sent a much stronger message. Nobody should sleep easy on the Maga fascist threat that still exists,” he said.“Maga fascist” is Fontes’ preferred terminology for “election deniers”. He uses the phrase liberally, referring to Donald Trump’s election slogan, “Make America Great Again” (Maga), which is used by opponents to indicate the former US president’s shrinking and increasingly rightwing base of loyal voters.It indicates how Fontes plans to shore up democracy in his new role as Arizona secretary of state.“I use the words ‘Maga fascists’ because it’s the truth,” he said. “These people are not Grand Old Party Republicans; they are Maga fascists. There is no reason for me to call them by anything other than what they are. If they feel a little sensitive about that, then maybe they ought to reconsider their position vis-a-vis American democracy and stop acting like fascists.”His remarks could be construed as hyperbole. But when it comes to the attack on democracy, Arizona and hyperbole go together; as one commentator put it, the state is the “final frontier” for election denialism.Trump’s playbook, in which legitimate elections are denounced as riddled with fraud when he or his anointed candidates do not win, was deployed again in the Arizona midterm election. Several counties controlled by Republicans delayed certification of their results despite being able to produce no evidence of any substantial problems.Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor who was defeated by the current secretary of state, Democrat Katie Hobbs, continues to refuse to concede. Lake filed a lawsuit in Maricopa, the state’s most populous county, challenging the certification and claiming to be the official winner.Lake’s suit was rejected by a court, and Democrats – and swing voters – have been heartened by Hobbs’ and Fontes’ victories as an important element in the national thwarting of the predicted Republican “red wave” and defeat of extremists in the midterms. Nevertheless, Fontes sees Lake’s dogged refusal to accept the outcome of a legitimate count as evidence of the ongoing peril the country is in.“We must stop pretending these guys have legitimate complaints, catering to their eggshell sensitivities. We must confront them again and again, treating them like the enemies to democracy that they are. We’re not name-calling, we’re truth-telling – there’s a big difference,” he said.Fontes served for four years in the 1990s in the US Marine Corps, and went on to a career as a lawyer and prosecutor. He first stood for public office in 2016, when he was voted in as recorder of Maricopa county, introducing him to the increasingly volatile world of Arizona’s election administration.Once in the hot seat as Arizona’s chief election official, Fontes intends to use his clout to press the state legislature to increase penalties against anyone threatening or intimidating election workers.During the midterm elections, self-appointed “monitors”, some wearing tactical gear, some visibly armed, staked out outdoor ballot drop boxes that were part of the legal means of casting a vote, sometimes taking pictures of voters’ car registration or asking them questions.“We had folks with long rifles and camouflage gear ‘guarding’ our ballot drop boxes,” Fontes said. “That was asinine. Those folks should be prosecuted as the domestic terrorists that they are.”Any attempt at intimidating election workers should be severely dealt with, he said. “We need to be aggressive – not just assertive, but aggressive – in pursuing these threats, because elections are the gold thread that holds the whole fabric of our society together. We’ve got to defend them fiercely.”TopicsArizonaThe fight for democracyDemocratsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Recount Confirms Democrat’s Victory in Arizona’s Attorney General Race

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      Kris Mayes defeated Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican election denier, by 280 votes out of 2.5 million ballots cast, a court announced.Kris Mayes, the Democratic candidate for attorney general in Arizona, prevailed on Thursday in a recount by a razor-thin margin over Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican, bringing clarity to one of the last undecided races of the midterms.The margin of victory for Ms. Mayes was 280 votes out of about 2.5 million ballots cast in the November election, said Judge Timothy J. Thomason of the Maricopa County Superior Court, who announced the recount’s results in a brief judicial hearing. The recount reduced the margin between the two candidates by about half, with the Election Day results showing Mr. Hamadeh trailing Ms. Mayes by 511 votes.Mr. Hamadeh, whose legal effort to have himself declared the winner was dismissed by a judge on Friday, continued to sow doubt in the election results, saying in a post on Twitter that “we must get to the bottom of this election” and calling for ballots to be inspected.But during closing arguments in last week’s trial, Mr. Hamadeh’s lawyer, Timothy La Sota, acknowledged that he did not have any evidence of intentional misconduct or any vote discrepancies that would make up the gap between the candidates.On Thursday, Ms. Mayes shared a photo of her certificate of election on Twitter and issued a statement about the recount results, saying that “democracy is truly a team sport” and that she was ready to get to work as attorney general.The recount was conducted by county election officials, who reported their results to the secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat. She won the governor’s race last month against the Kari Lake, a Republican election denier who continues to dispute her defeat.The outcome of the attorney general’s contest dealt another blow to Republicans in a state where the party entered the midterms with heightened expectations of creating a red wave by seizing on high inflation and the flagging job approval numbers of President Biden.That perceived advantage turned out to be a mirage, with Democrats winning most of the marquee statewide offices.Election deniers pointed to technical glitches on Election Day, which disrupted some ballot counting in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, to fuel conspiracy theories and baseless claims. Mr. Hamadeh and Ms. Lake contended that the election had been compromised.But election officials in Maricopa County, which is led by Republicans, have defended the voting process and said that there was no evidence that voters were turned away from casting ballots.Alexandra Berzon More

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      Arizona judge declines to sanction Kari Lake for lawsuit challenging election

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      Arizona judge declines to sanction Kari Lake for lawsuit challenging electionCase contesting race for governor was rejected and Republican candidate ordered to pay $33,000 to cover legal costs An Arizona judge declined a request on Tuesday to sanction Kari Lake for filing a lawsuit trying to overturn the result of the state’s gubernatorial race.Peter Thompson, a superior court judge in Maricopa county, rejected the case on Saturday, saying Lake, a Republican, had failed to prove there was intentional misconduct that cost her the race.‘A really dangerous candidate’: Kari Lake, the new face of Maga RepublicanismRead moreBoth Maricopa county and Governor-elect Katie Hobbs subsequently asked the court to sanction Lake, writing: “This matter was brought without any legitimate justification, let alone a substantial one.” But Thompson disagreed on Tuesday. Even though Lake did not win the case, it did not mean that her lawsuit was in bad faith.“There is no doubt that each side believes firmly in its position with great conviction,” he wrote. “The fact that Plaintiff failed to meet the burden of clear and convincing evidence required for each element of [Arizona statute] does not equate to a finding that her claims were, or were not, groundless and presented in bad faith.”While he declined to order sanctions, Thompson did order Lake to pay Hobbs about $33,000 to cover some legal costs in the case. Maricopa county and Hobbs had requested about $695,000 in costs from her.Lake, who lost the race by about 17,000 votes, was one of the most prominent spreaders of election misinformation in the 2022 campaign. She repeatedly said on the campaign trail, falsely, that the 2020 election was stolen. Ahead of the gubernatorial race this year, she declined to say whether she would accept the results if she lost.Lake is appealing her loss in the case as well as the order to pay legal fees. She has indicated she will take the case all the way to the Arizona supreme court, though any appeal would have to move quickly since Hobbs is set to be sworn in on Tuesday, the Arizona Republic reported.TopicsArizonaThe fight for democracyUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Arizona governor-elect asks court to sanction Kari Lake after suit dismissed

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      Arizona governor-elect asks court to sanction Kari Lake after suit dismissedThe Republican election denier failed to overturn November’s election – and now may face a penalty for a ‘frivolous’ lawsuit The Democratic governor-elect of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, asked a court on Monday to sanction her defeated Republican rival, Kari Lake, over her failed effort to overturn the election result.Kari Lake: Arizona judge throws out challenge to defeat in governor raceRead moreIn legal filings, Hobbs also pointed to a now-deleted tweet from Lake in which the Republican suggested the judge overseeing her lawsuit had acted unethically.On Saturday, Judge Peter Thompson rejected Lake’s lawsuit challenging the counting and certification of the November election in an attempt to be declared the winner despite a lack of evidence of voter fraud.Hobbs subsequently joined a motion by Maricopa county for sanctions against Lake and her attorneys, in which the county deputy attorney, Thomas P Liddy, said the Republican filed a “groundless” lawsuit for a “frivolous pursuit”.“Enough really is enough,” Liddy wrote in the motion. “It is past time to end unfounded attacks on elections and unwarranted accusations against elections officials.”The motion had “no basis in law or fact”, lawyers for Lake said on Monday evening, asking the court to deny the request.“Trust in the election process is not furthered by punishing those who bring legitimate claims as plaintiff did here. In fact, sanctioning plaintiff would have the opposite effect.”Sanctions would be in the form of a financial penalty imposed for violation of a court rule or for misconduct.Lake targeted Hobbs, currently Arizona’s secretary of state but governor from next week, along with top officials in Maricopa county. The Republican’s suit claimed “hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election” in the state’s most populous county.In a separate filing, Hobbs asked the superior court in Maricopa county to award her more than $600,000 to compensate for fees and expenses accrued in defending Lake’s lawsuit.Kari Lake: defeated governor candidate challenges Arizona election resultRead moreLake, a former TV news anchor, was one of the most high-profile Republicans in the midterm elections to embrace Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud in 2020. She lost but refused to concede and continued making unconfirmed claims about election improprieties.Lake posted the later-deleted tweet on Monday morning, the Hill reported. It suggested Marc Elias, founding partner of the election law firm representing Hobbs, sent Thompson an email telling him “what to say” in his dismissal.The tweet quoted Rachel Alexander, who made the suggestion in an opinion piece for Townhall.com.“The dismissal of Kari Lake’s election lawsuit shows voter disenfranchisement no longer matters,” the Hill quoted the now-deleted tweet as saying. “Legal experts believe his decision [by Judge Thompson] was ghostwritten, they suspect top leftwing attorneys like Marc Elias emailed him what to say.”Lake’s camp maintained in court papers she had “simply retweeted” Alexander, and said: “Tweets, especially those authored by others, do not support sanctions under Arizona law.”Elias commented, tweeting: “I’ve had a lot of lies told about me today – more than usual … More than even after the 2020 election. I always first point them out and ask for them to be deleted. Honorable people do so. But, the people still lying about me are doing it on purpose. But I’m done. Goodnight.”TopicsArizonaUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Arizona Judge Rejects Kari Lake’s Effort to Overturn Her Election Loss

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      Kari Lake, a Republican who was defeated by Katie Hobbs in the Arizona governor’s race, had made false election claims the centerpiece of her campaign.A state judge on Saturday rejected Kari Lake’s last-ditch effort to overturn her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race, dismissing for lack of evidence her last two claims of misconduct by Maricopa County election officials.The ruling, after a two-day trial in Phoenix that ended Thursday, follows more than six weeks of claims by Ms. Lake, a Republican, that she was robbed of victory last month — assertions that echoed the false contention that was at the heart of her campaign: that an even larger theft had stolen the 2020 presidential election from Donald J. Trump.Ms. Lake and her supporters conjured up what they called a deliberate effort by election officials in Maricopa County, the state’s largest county, to disenfranchise her voters. But they never provided evidence of such intentional malfeasance, nor even evidence that any voters had been disenfranchised.In a 10-page ruling, Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson acknowledged “the anger and frustration of voters who were subjected to inconvenience and confusion at voter centers as technical problems arose” in this year’s election.But he said his duty was “not solely to incline an ear to public outcry,” and noted that, in seeking to overturn Katie Hobbs’s victory by a 17,117-vote margin, Ms. Lake was pursuing a remedy that appeared unprecedented.“A court setting such a margin aside, as far as the Court is able to determine, has never been done in the history of the United States,” Judge Thompson wrote.He went on to rule flatly that Ms. Lake and the witnesses she called had failed to provide evidence of intentional misconduct that changed the election’s outcome.“Plaintiff has no free-standing right to challenge election results based upon what Plaintiff believes — rightly or wrongly — went awry on Election Day,” the judge wrote. “She must, as a matter of law, prove a ground that the legislature has provided as a basis for challenging an election.”Undaunted, Ms. Lake insisted her case had “provided the world with evidence that proves our elections are run outside of the law,” and said she would appeal “for the sake of restoring faith and honesty in our elections.”Ms. Lake, a former Phoenix television news anchor, lost to Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat who is the Arizona secretary of state, and who rose to national prominence when she resisted efforts by Trump loyalists to overturn the vote in 2020.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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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