According to members of Congress, a watchdog group, the Biden administration is secretly planning an executive order that directs federal agencies to concentrate on voter registration and work with private organizations to increase election turnout.
Last March, President Joe Biden made an agreement to sign an executive order stating that federal agencies “shall consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.”
The president’s order says that each agency must submit its plan to Susan Rice, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, to “promote voter registration and voter participation.”
Congressional Democrats haven’t been able to pass election overhauls such as their “For the People Act,” which would eliminate most state voter ID laws, expand the practice of ballot harvesting, and mandate Election Day voter registration.
A scaled-down version and a separate proposal giving the federal government veto powers over state election laws were passed by the Democratic-controlled House. However, the Senate split 50-50 between Republicans (including two independents) and Democrats.
According to Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), the secretive process seems like a way to supplement that.
“Just because President Biden’s federal election takeover bill failed in Congress doesn’t mean he has the right to try and impose it through executive action,” Budd told The Daily Signal Thursday in a written statement, adding:
Voters in every part of the country have the right know if the federal bureaucracy’s power is being used for political reasons. Republicans believe it should be easy for voters to vote but difficult to cheat. That’s what election integrity is all about.
Budd was the House Republican’s leader in a vote last month. letter pushing the Office of Management and Budget’s acting director, Shalanda Young, for documents and other information about Biden’s executive order empowering federal agencies to engage in election-related activities that they said “raises serious ethical, legal, and constitutional concerns.”
The letter was signed by 33 GOP members and co-chairs of House Election Integrity Caucus, Reps. Claudia Tenney, R.N.Y., as well as Mike Garcia, R.Calif.
“This EO’s strategy appears to enable the Biden administration to use federal government resources, funded by American taxpayers, to circumvent newly passed state election integrity laws,” the letter to OMB’s Young says. “These laws make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. The Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to federalize state-run elections will erode these important protections.”
Budd co-authored last week an article. op-ed in The Hill calling for more information about Biden’s “backdoor plan to influence elections.” The North Carolina Republican wrote the op-ed with Tarren Bragdon, CEO of The Foundation for Government Accountability, a watchdog group.
Biden’s order specified that every agency would focus on:
—“distributing voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms, and providing access to applicable state online systems for individuals who can take advantage of those systems.”
—“assisting applicants in completing voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms in a manner consistent with all relevant state laws.”
—“soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and state officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”
The Daily Signal reached out to OMB and the White House for clarifications on this report.
Each agency may have detailed election-related plans. However, details are missing. Chase Martin, legal affairs Director for the Foundation for Government Accountability, stated that each agency has requested documents since August under the Freedom of Information Act.
“It is very troubling that the administration is preventing access to these plans,” Martin told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Wednesday. “This executive order is definitely as insidious, and I’d say worse, than the election takeover legislation. … Not to my knowledge has anything this politicized, on this scale, been done before and definitely not with so much secrecy.”
One day after House Republicans sent their letter, Vice President Kamala Harris told CBS News that the Biden administration would lean on the executive action and rely on Justice Department litigation against state election laws after Democrats’ election overhauls failed in the Senate.
“What we will do is keep fighting to get the legislation passed because that is critical. So we are not giving up on that,” Harris toldCBS News. “And then it is a matter of continuing to do the work of executive orders, doing the work through the Department of Justice, which has been litigating these cases in the various states, because we believe they are a violation of the spirit of the Constitution of the United States.”
Democrats claim that voter suppression laws, which require voters to present identification in order to cast ballots, are state laws.
In September, the White House announced the response of agencies to their election-related plan, ignoring the 200-day deadline. The White House issued a statement. four-page summaryThese plans.
According to the White House the Justice Department will concentrate on allowing those in prison to vote. The summary said the law enforcement agency will “provide information about voting to individuals in federal custody, facilitate voting by those who remain eligible to do so while in federal custody, and educate individuals before reentry about voting rules and voting rights in their states.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s focus will be on voter registration “at the end of naturalization ceremonies for the hundreds of thousands of citizens naturalized each year,” according to the White House summary of agency plans.
The Education Department, the summary says, will prepare “a tool kit of resources and strategies for increasing civic engagement at the elementary school, secondary school, and higher education level, helping more than 67 million students.”
The Defense Department will provide information to ensure service members are eligible to vote before the federal elections. The Agriculture Department’s Rural Housing Service will work with lenders to provide opportunity to register for those seeking mortgages.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Community Living plans to launch a “voting access hub” to connect older adults and disabled persons with voting information, tools, and resources.
Republicans raised questions about the executive order’s reference to agencies’ soliciting “nonpartisan third-party organizations” to register voters.
“Determining which third-party organizations will be approved, by whom, and based on what criteria is conveniently missing” from the order, House Republicans’ letter to OMB says. “We are concerned that agencies will not be prevented from selecting nominally nonpartisan organizations to carry out these services.”
Hans von Spakovsky is the manager of The Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative. He said that there is no need for the federal government to make such an effort.
“We had the highest voter registration rate in 2020 than we’ve had in the last five or six presidential elections,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal. “When federal agencies are involved in voter registration, the real fear is that the party that controls the White House will use federal agencies to engage in partisan registration. If the administration is hiding the details, you have to ask, why?”
House Republicans’ letter also asserts that Biden’s order “is nearly identical to a federal election takeover plan crafted by the radical left-leaning group known as Demos.”
Demos, a liberal advocacy group, issued recommendations in December 2020 for Biden to “direct federal agencies to provide voter registration services” and “issue an executive order directing federal agencies serving under-registered populations to provide voter registration services.”
The Daily Signal reached out to Demos for clarification on this report.
When Demos published a policy brief in December titled “Executive Action to Advance Democracy,” the group’s president was K. Sabeel Rahman and its legal strategies director was Chiraag Bains.
Bains and Rahman were both appointed top White House officials shortly after Biden assumed office. Rahman is OMB’s senior counsel and Bains is deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, under Rice.
In their letter last month to OMB, House Republicans ask what role Rahman played in drafting Biden’s executive order.
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