DOJ Monitors Maricopa County as Arizona Votes in Primary

As Arizona residents head to the polls today for the state’s primary election, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it would be keeping a close eye on Maricopa County to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws.
In the past few election cycles, Maricopa County emerged as a hotbed of election-related conspiracy theories, litigation, and intimidation. During the 2022 midterms, several Republican candidates who lost their election — including gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh — filed lawsuits to overturn the election results, citing unproven allegations of voter fraud. And even more Republican organizations and figures filed lawsuit after lawsuit to decertify the 2022 election that also cited unproven allegations of election workers in Maricopa County failing to comply with state election laws.
Maricopa County was similarly at the center of election conspiracy theories and voter intimidation in the 2020 election. But an audit of that election found no evidence of fraud or “vote switching” in the election. There was, however, an attempt by numerous allies of former President Donald Trump to send fake electors to vote for Trump instead of President Joe Biden, who won the state’s election by a little over 10,000 votes.
Maricopa County is also a focus point for several right-wing lawsuits challenging the state’s election procedure manual and processes to administer and certify elections. According to Democracy Docket’s case tracker, there are currently eight active anti-voting cases in the Grand Canyon state.
And, as it was in the previous two elections, Arizona has one of the highest number of federal cases related to election threats in the nation — seven of 18 active cases — according to the New York Times. “We unfortunately are a leader in that,” Gary Restaino, the U.S. attorney general for Arizona, said at a recent news conference. “We expect that we are going to remain in the cross hairs, so to speak, of these threats, given that Arizona will remain a battleground state.”
Though the DOJ didn’t specify if they were monitoring any particular claims of voter fraud or harassment in Maricopa County, it said in a release that it “enforces the federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all citizens to access the ballot” and that its Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section “regularly deploys its staff to monitor for compliance with federal civil rights laws in elections in communities all across the country.”