The latter came out strong on Saturday at former President Donald’s Trump’s first rally of 2022 in Florence, Arizona. Among the dozen or so Trump supporters there who spoke to CNN, big conspiracy theories — all of which have been debunked — about how the 2020 election was supposedly rigged (such as through slot machines). vote related to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013) appear to have given way to more refined talking points that align closely with the restrictive voting measures adopted by Republicans across the country.

“There’s a famous statement – ‘sometimes the vote meter is more important than the candidate,'” Trump said in a video posted online Friday, highlighting how Republicans motivated by his election lies have sought to undermine legitimacy. American elections. Arizona — which President Joe Biden carried in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state since 1996 — has been at the center of those efforts.

On Saturday in Florence, Trump showed exactly what kind of “vote counters” he approves of.

“I look forward to the day when we set aside an irretrievably flawed election. This is the 2020 election. With all the evidence we have, the election in Arizona should be rightfully overturned by the legislature,” Finchem said, repeating the former president’s lies. of the podium during his rally on Saturday.

But also at Trump’s rally, there was rare praise for a Democrat.

Sinema, along with Senator Joe Machin of West Virginia, is blocking the passage of a pair of voting rights bills that Democrats hope could counter some of the restrictive voting measures passed by Republicans at the level of the state. Sinema said she supported the bills but not in favor of changing Senate rules to get them passed.

Opposition from these two moderate Democrats is frustrating suffrage activists, including those who gathered in Arizona over the weekend.

“She says she wants the right to vote, but how do you want the right to vote without creating a pathway for that to happen? It’s inconsistent; it’s unacceptable,” said Martin Luther King’s son Jr., Martin Luther King III, at CNN in Phoenix. On Saturday.

The King family had traveled to Arizona to take part in a suffrage march, calling on Sinema to take action – warning that history would not judge her kindly.

Hobbs said democracy prevailed in 2020 because election officials on both sides of the aisle did their jobs — but now, with Trump-endorsed Holocaust deniers running for jobs that would give them authority over the election, the future is less certain.

“The 2022 election, I think, is going to determine the future of our democracy,” Hobbs said.

It’s a sentiment shared by Yolanda Renee King, the 13-year-old granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr., who was with her family this weekend in Phoenix, telling CNN, “I think it’s so important to vote and it’s so important to have the right to vote, because right now our country is at stake.”