In 2024, as Arizona Republicans and Democrats set their eyes on departing independent U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's seat, two previously-unknown candidates jumped into the race under the Arizona Green Party's banner. But longtime Green Party members all said the same thing, they'd never heard of Scottsdale resident Mike Norton or Yuma man Arturo Hernandez.

Instead, Arizona Green Party officials accused outside interests of meddling in its primary elections in an attempt to swing the race to replace Sinema in favor of the major party candidates at the expense of longtime Green Eduardo Quintana, who was running in the primary as a write-in candidate for a shot to secure spot on the general election ballot. That forced the Arizona Green Party to put together a longshot campaign to inform its members across the state to write in Quintana's name instead of selecting one of the two candidates who would actually appear on their primary ballot.

The effort worked and Quintana won the race by just 100 votes — but that's not the end of the story as a misinterpretation of Arizona election law by state officials nearly kept him off the general election ballot anyway. The saga revealed the ways in which Arizona election law can work against third-party candidates and open up opportunities for major party interests to game the system.