Thread: Fed tax resources & agencies used to register felons & students

The article also says the feds are paying college students through work grants to register voters.

Biden executive order has federal agencies recruiting Democrat voters on taxpayer's dime, including convicted criminals

• by: Pat Droney
• 2024-04-03
• Source: Law Enforcement Today

Convict by is licensed under Canva

WASHINGTON, DC - Republicans are growing increasingly concerned over a push by the federal government to register inmates who are incarcerated in the federal prison system to vote, according to The Epoch Times. That push comes under yet another executive order by Joe Biden designed to circumvent Congress.



Executive Order 14019 states, “The head of each agency shall evaluate ways in which the agency can, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, promote voter registration and participation.”

Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson wrote Attorney General Merrick Garland on March 6 in which he expressed concern that agencies under the purview of the Justice Department are “attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons, and to co-opt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.” And they accuse Republicans and, in particular, former President Donald Trump of “threatening our democracy.”
Watson wrote that Biden’s order had directed U.S. Marshals to modify over 900 contracts with prisons and jails to provide voter registration documents and facilitate mail-in voting for federal inmates.

“We have worked extremely hard to restore the confidence of Mississippi voters in our election process,” Watson told The Epoch Times. “To have the Biden administration and DOJ purposefully undermine these efforts and jeopardize the integrity of Mississippi’s elections is unacceptable.” Watson acts as the chief election officer in Mississippi.

Some critics suggest, however, that the DOJ’s attempt to register inmates to vote is only the “tip of the iceberg.”

Other federal agencies–the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development- also facilitate voter signup drives.

The administration has also launched a federal plan to use work-study grants to pay students to register voters, which was lauded by “border czar” Kamala Harris.

Worse still, the administration seeks to select “approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and state officials to provide voter registration on agency premises,” referring to the above federal agencies. [emphasis added] Non-governmental (third-party) organizations have also been actively involved in efforts to bring illegal aliens into the United States.

Ceridwen Cherry, a former staff attorney for the far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Voting Rights Project, praised the move and called Biden’s executive order “visionary.”

“In a democracy, [representative Republic] governments at all levels should be doing everything they can to help eligible people register to vote.”

Some, however, are very concerned about the executive order and feel that Biden is (again) overstepping his authority, noting that elections are under the purview of individual states and not the federal government.

“The reason it’s such a big problem is that, with the president, it’s only one political party that’s in power,” Stewart Whitson, legal director of the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a conservative think tank, said to The Epoch Times.

“If you allow the president to be the one to decide where all these massive resources are channeled, that’s problematic,” he said, highlighting that the Founders directed states, not the federal government or executive branch, to have authority over elections.

But Trump and Republicans are “threatening our Democracy.”

The current plan has been referred to as “Bidenbucks” by Whitson, channeling the term given to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s 2020 election interference, where he dumped $400 million into changing state election programs primarily in swing states, which was dubbed “Zuckerbucks.”

“This is Zuckerbucks on steroids because instead of $400 million, it’s unlimited funding and resources and the reach of the federal government and all its offices located across the country,’ Whitson said.

This isn’t the first time Democrats have tried to federalize elections, with previous attempts crashing and burning. For example, in 2022, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tried to mothball the legislative filibuster to pass H.R. 5746, the so-called “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act,” which would have federalized some parts of state election systems, expanded voting by mail, and gutted election security measures such as requiring voter ID.

But Trump and Republicans are “threatening our democracy.”

Democrats laughably claimed the bill was necessary to “fight voter suppression” by state governments. The fact is, in most states, you need to show ID to purchase alcohol, carry a firearm, purchase cigarettes, and, in some states, buy prescription drugs at a pharmacy, Requiring ID to carry out the most sacred duty of a United States citizen would seem to be natural. Not for Democrats, however.

Under Biden’s executive order, federal agencies are also directed to explore ways to distribute “vote-by-mail ballot application forms and offer assistance to applicants in completing the application “in a manner consistent with all relevant State laws.”

Mail-in ballots have come into wider use, with nearly 45 percent of voters using mail-in ballots in the 2020 general election.

Suspiciously, efforts to obtain information from federal agencies about how agencies will implement Biden’s order, what private organizations or NGOs will be used to work with federal offices and other information has been closely held, with federal agencies refusing to release that information. Despite several FOIA filings and related lawsuits, the administration continues to stonewall efforts to determine what they are up to.

Remember, “the adults are back in charge,” and this is “the most transparent administration in US history.”

In July 2021, FGA filed a FOIA request seeking BIden’s Voting Access Plan, seeking information about what federal agencies were doing to implement the plan, as well as seeking records from planning and strategy meetings among Biden’s staff, federal agencies, and the “architects” of EO 14019.

“These documents, in any other context, would be handed over much more quickly,” Whitson said. “So this indicates to us that there’s something there the Biden administration really does not care to share because they’ve withheld it for nearly three years now.”

Another plaintiff in the FOIA suit, America First Legal, calls Biden’s executive order “the president’s unprecedented effort to deploy federal agencies in support of partisan voting operations and fortify politically aligned private organizations working to circumvent state election integrity laws.”

Legal battles continue over two years later, almost as if the administration is simply trying to “run out the clock.” The administration is using the legal apparatus of the federal government, including the White House counsel and the DOJ, to fight the requests.

What are they trying to hide?

What does voter registration have to do with the mission of the Department of Health and Human Services? If you answered nothing, you would be correct. However, HHS announced in 2022 that federal health centers nationwide have the discretion to participate in activities, including voter registration, that are clearly “outside the scope of core department activities,” The Epoch Times wrote.

“Such voter registration activities may include making available voter registration materials to patients, encouraging patients to register to vote, assisting patients with completing registration forms, sending completed forms to election authorities, providing voter registration materials in waiting rooms, and allowing private, non-partisan organizations to conduct on-site voter registration, the HHS website says. [emphasis added]

The Epoch Times reported that in addition to HHS, HUD has instructed over 3,000 public housing authorities that manage 1.2 million public housing units to run voter registration drives in those units.

Meanwhile, the Department of Education sent letters to universities instructing them to use Federal Work Study funds “to support voter registration activities.”

“If a student is employed directly by a post-secondary institution, the institution may compensate a student for [Federal Work Study] employment involving voter registration activities that take place on or off-campus.”

Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, says the Department of Education has been very active in turning out likely Democrat voters.
‘Every college campus is massively dependent on Department of Education largesse, from Pell grants to every other kind of aid,” Walter told The Epoch Times.

“The Department of Education in 2022 was threatening campuses that you better be registering students or you could lose your federal funds.”

But Trump and the Republicans are “threatening our democracy.”
Not to be left behind, the Department of Agriculture also issued letters to state agencies that administer the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women’s Infants and Children (WIC) low-income food program, advising them to carry out voter registration drives with federal funds.

Two far-left groups touting Biden’s Democrat voter registration drive initiative (let’s face it, that’s what it is), the ACLU and Strengthening Democracy, issued a “report card” on how well ten federal agencies are doing to carry out Biden’s scheme, and how they might “improve”:

HHS should include voter registration in applications for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act; the VA should include voter registration for vets who sign up for VA health benefits; the Education Department should include voter registration when students apply for federal student aid; and the Bureau of Prisons should work to register eligible criminals, er convicts.
The amazing part of all this is these private organizations don’t seem to be hiding what they are trying to do–register Democrat voters, a point not lost on Whitson.

“They’re targeting welfare agencies that serve predominantly left-leaning voters,” Whitson said. “It’s targeted voter registration, so you don’t have to worry about turning out more Republican voters if you focus your efforts in places where the vast majority of voters are going to lean left.”

The administration also is playing fast and loose with the Hatch Act, which prohibits political activities by federal employees under certain conditions.
“They’re essentially taking third-party groups, and they’re bringing them onto federal land, into a federal office, and who knows what they’re doing,” Whitson wondered. “Who knows if they’re following state laws governing voter registration and the collection of applications?

“Our question is, which groups are approved, what’s the criteria for approval, who gets to decide which groups you’re going to cooperate with? And they haven’t disclosed that information either.”

In the case of Mississippi, Watson noted that his department oversees state elections and said he is unaware of any contact between it and the DOJ, leading to the question of who the US Marshals are using to accomplish this demand.

“Many outside groups performing voter registration and vote harvesting services are partisan entities with a history of being unreliable,” Watson’s letter reads.

Whitson said that according to FGA investigations, “a sampling of who these hidden third party groups are” indicates “they’re all left-wing voter advocacy groups.” So much for “nonpartisan.”

“As they’re handing out welfare benefits, they’re allowing these groups special access. They’re allowing them to set up in the lobby so when people come into the agency to fill out their paperwork and apply for benefits, they’re greeted by these groups.”

The list of groups supporting Biden’s effort is a who’s who of far-left radical groups in the pocket of the Democratic Party, including the previously mentioned ACLU, teachers unions, public employee unions, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP, the Black Voters Matter Fund, Public Citizen, Planned Parenthood, the League of Women Voters, and the Sierra Club.
Republicans are attempting to fight back but face an uphill battle. In the Senate, Republicans introduced a bill last May prohibiting federal agencies from using taxpayer funds or collaborating with private organizations to mobilize voters.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) said, “The federal government and its millions of employees should not be using official resources to advance partisan politics.” He was one of six senators to introduce the bill, the Promoting Free and Fair Elections Act.

“President Biden’s executive order empowering every federal agency to engage in electioneering on the taxpayers’ dime raises serious ethical and legal concerns [and] is inherently political and directed primarily at groups expected to vote for one party [Democrats] over another,” Budd said.

In the House, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) introduced an amendment to the 2024 appropriations bill that would prohibit federal agencies from being used to implement Biden’s executive order.

“This is an inappropriate and unconstitutional federalization of elections,” Tenney said when she introduced the amendment last November. “America’s civil service should be nonpartisan, and federal agencies should not be using taxpayer funds to actively engage in get-out-the-vote operations that have nothing to do with the agency’s core missions.”

Meanwhile, Connecticut’s resident House Broomhilda, purple-haired fossil Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) responded by saying Biden’s executive order “recognizes that there are too many obstacles to voting” and it is in place to “expand access to voter registration and election information.”
She forgot one part–to register more Democrat voters.

In Pennsylvania, legislators have filed a federal complaint against Biden, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and representatives of the state’s Department of State, alleging they have overstepped their authority and usurped that of the Legislature by changing voter registration and election rules.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, asks a judge to declare three unconstitutional actions: a voter registration executive order issued by Biden; a voter registration action by Shapiro; and directives issued by the Pennsylvania Department of State. They are also asking the judge to prohibit Biden, Shapiro, and state executives from changing the Keystone State’s election process without following the legislative process, The Epoch Times wrote.

“Federal campaign finance laws apply to private parties’ voter registration activities,” the court filing says. “Voter registration is a federally recognized private function, not a government function.”

But remember..."Trump and the Republicans are threatening our Democracy."

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Biden executive order has federal agencies recruiting Democrat voters on taxpayer’s dime, including convicted criminals