Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

Phoenix

Reporter covering voting issues in Arizona

Education: University of Idaho, BS in Journalism

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez writes about voting issues in Arizona for The Washington Post. Her reporting focuses on how state and local officials navigate pressures on the administration of elections, while tracking legislative and legal battles over voting rules and access to the polls. She also tells the stories of people and communities who have lost faith in American democracy. She previously covered politics for the Arizona Republic.
Latest from Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

Amid worry about Trump, calls for career Justice Dept. staff to stay

Attorney General Merrick Garland and other top officials are urging career staffers to stay at the Justice Department during a second Trump administration.

December 2, 2024
Attorney General Merrick Garland is seen in 2023.

Kari Lake settles election defamation case brought by Arizona official

Stephen Richer, the election official and a lifelong Republican, had sued Lake, who made election denialism a centerpiece for her unsuccessful 2022 campaign for governor.

November 17, 2024
Republican Kari Lake ran unsuccessfully for governor of Arizona in 2022 and for U.S. senator in 2024.

Two Republicans who lost Senate races refuse to concede

Eric Hovde in Wisconsin has questioned how the election was conducted, while Kari Lake in Arizona has stopped short of blaming her loss on alleged voter fraud.

November 14, 2024
Republican Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde arrives at a campaign event for former president Donald Trump at the Dodge County Airport in Juneau, Wisconsin, on Oct. 6. (Joel Angel Juarez for The Washington Post)

Judge recuses from Arizona case over his email denouncing attacks on Harris

Maricopa County Judge Bruce Cohen had emailed colleagues, urging them to speak out against attacks on Kamala Harris’s race or gender. A defendant accused him of bias.

November 13, 2024
Judge Bruce Cohen speaks during a pretrial hearing on Aug. 28 related to the fake electors case in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix.

Why did so many voters swing to the right? Your election questions, answered.

Post reporters from around the country answered your questions about the second election of Donald Trump to the White House.

November 8, 2024

Republican election denial claims take a hiatus with Trump’s victory

The true test of a democracy is accepting the result even when the other side wins, say election officials and some Democratic leaders

November 6, 2024
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) visits poll workers in Atlanta on Election Day.

Election Day largely ran smoothly, with just a handful of issues

Bomb threats briefly interrupted balloting at some polling centers, but voters otherwise cast their ballots without incident as officials touted a successful election.

November 6, 2024
Voters wait in line at a polling station Oct. 29 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Rural Arizona shows how Trump allies could try to thwart election certification

Two Republican county leaders were criminally charged after delaying certification of the 2022 election results. Election experts worry it was a rehearsal for the 2024 presidential election.

November 4, 2024
Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, who is running for reelection, is scheduled to go to trial early next year.

Trump escalates false claims of fraud, setting stage to cry foul if he loses

The former president and his allies have produced no evidence of widespread fraud or attempts to rig this election or the previous one, which he lost to President Joe Biden.

November 4, 2024
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during a campaign event at the Salem Civic Center in Salem, Virginia, on Saturday.

Panic buttons, drones, snipers among plans to guard a high-risk election

Analysts say extraordinary security measures protect voters but show the far-reaching effects of Donald Trump’s election denialism

November 3, 2024
Security cameras, fencing and the secured walls outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix.