The Department of Justice’s recent plea to the Supreme Court to allow voters in Arizona to apply for absentee ballots without documented proof of citizenship is one of several instances of the Biden administration wading into state-level battles ahead of the 2024 election.
The DOJ has also pushed this year for more lenient mail-in voting rules in Ohio and Alabama, and it brought a lawsuit to add more Spanish-speaking poll workers in Rhode Island.
The department’s involvement in state election matters is not new — the government has since the 1960s had jurisdiction to enforce the Voting Rights Act. The civil rights-era legislation was designed to make sure black citizens had an equal ability to vote. The DOJ also has for decades had other federal laws at its disposal, such as the National Voter Registration Act.
However, during the Biden administration, the DOJ has become more…
