Students will receive financial assistance from the government to support Biden’s reelection campaign, funded by taxpayers, in the new ‘Bidenbucks’ initiative
The Biden administration is determined to push its partisan get-out-the-vote campaign before the November election, and it’s willing to trample on the Constitution to achieve it.
Vice President Kamala Harris recently outlined the Democrats’ “four-part strategy” to use the full power of the federal government to increase votes for Biden — a plan that experts say violates federal law.
“Today, we gather to lay out a four-part strategy to protect the freedom to vote. The first part is the work that the president and I have done to charge every federal agency to do all they can to make sure that every American has the information that they need to know how they can vote when they are eligible,” Harris stated Tuesday before convening a “closed-door meeting” at the White House with leftist voting activists.
Tuesday’s announcement and recent guidance by the U.S. Department of Education indicate an urgency on the part of the administration to activate the full machinery of what has been dubbed “Bidenbucks” — the use of federal agencies and resources to target likely left-leaning voters for the pivotal presidential election in November. It seems that federal agencies are enthusiastically carrying out President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019. Signed shortly after Biden took office, the order authorizes federal agencies to expand voter registration and turnout, enlisting “approved” third-party organizations to assist in the get-out-the-vote effort.
However, the executive branch’s involvement in such matters is not within its jurisdiction, but the Biden team seems unconcerned about such details.
Your Tax Dollars at Work?
As part of this four-point strategy, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will “email information on how to register to vote to everyone who enrolls” in the Affordable Care Act. Harris enthusiastically noted that this targets a market of 21 million people. The operation is already underway, with the first emails sent out last Friday.
All of the Social Security Administration’s approximately 1,200 offices nationwide will display signs from vote.gov, the U.S. voter information site. Vote.gov information will also be displayed at all national parks.
The action plan also aims to increase electoral participation among high school and college students. Students will be paid through the Federal Work-Study program to register voters and serve as “nonpartisan poll workers,” according to Harris.
“This is important for a number of reasons. One, to engage our young leaders in this process and activate them to strengthen our communities. But also, this is the work we need to do, considering that many poll workers have left this job for various reasons,” the vice president explained, alluding to the false narrative that election workers nationwide are constantly under threat from “election deniers.”
This week, the Department of Education issued a memo as a follow-up to a 2022 “Dear Colleague” letter, clarifying that Federal Work-Study (FWS) funds can be used to support “broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration, providing voter assistance at a polling place or through a voter hotline, or serving as a poll worker.”
The work-study program, which happens to be at risk in a pending House appropriations bill, is part of the financial aid package offered to college students, allowing them to earn money through on-campus jobs. Historically, these positions did not involve get-out-the-vote efforts — that is, until the implementation of the Bidenbucks initiative.
The DOE argues that under the Higher Education Act of 1965, eligible postsecondary institutions are required to “make a good faith effort to distribute a mail voter registration form, requested and received from the State, to each student enrolled in a degree or certificate program and physically in attendance at the institution, and to make such forms widely available to students at the institution.”
In the 2022 letter, the Office of Postsecondary Education stated:
FWS funds cannot be used for employment by a Federal, State, or local public agency, or a private nonprofit organization, other than the institution, for work involving partisan or nonpartisan political activity, including party-affiliated voter registration activities, as this is expressly prohibited under 34 CFR 675.22(b)(5).
However, the Department of Education now has a different interpretation. The agency claims that it is permissible to use Federal Work-Study funds for get-out-the-vote efforts if you interpret the regulations in a certain way.
“The Department is clarifying today that FWS funds may be used for employment by a Federal, State, local, or Tribal public agency for civic engagement work,” including get-out-the-vote and voter registration efforts, as well as serving as poll workers, the memo states. “We believe this interpretation is supported by the language of 34 CFR § 675.22(b)(5) and aligns with the overall meaning of the regulation, which aims to promote student employment in the public interest while ensuring that the work is not associated with any faction in an election or constitutes political activity.”
‘Foot Soldiers Into Democrat Strongholds’
If you want to see just how partisan this “employment in the public interest” is, just look at the number of conservatives involved in the federally-funded voter registration effort. Spoiler alert: Left-wingers dominate the process.
“The goal of this latest guidance from the Department of Education is to provide legal cover to education bureaucrats, allowing them to hire an army of college students using taxpayer dollars,” said Sofia De Vito, legal fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability. “If this continues, we will see campuses across the country deploying these foot soldiers into Democrat strongholds to get-out-the-vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2024.”
In October 2021, the FGA submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Education, seeking communications and documents related to Biden’s executive order. As I reported this week, the Department of Justice has been obstructing the release of records, condescendingly claiming that doing so would only “confuse the public.”
In the meantime, the Department of Education (DOE) has recently published a “toolkit” for the Biden administration’s get-out-the-vote campaign. As my colleague Brianna Lyman reported earlier this week, the Education Department guidance suggests that colleges and universities provide drop box locations and early-voting sites for students, the majority of whom tend to vote for Democrats.
‘Clearly Breaking the Law’
Constitutional law expert Hans von Spakovsky argues that the Biden administration’s latest scheme fails the legal test.
“Congress has never allocated any money for the executive branch to do that, so the administration is clearly breaking the law,” said von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and a former member of the Federal Election Commission.
“There’s no way that Congress allocated funds that could be used to interfere with the election process,” von Spakovsky added.
The legal expert argues that the Biden administration’s redirection of work-study funds violates the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from “obligating or expending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.”
However, von Spakovsky doesn’t expect much accountability. The U.S. Department of Justice is responsible for enforcing the Antideficiency Act, and Attorney General Merrick Garland “is not going to do anything to enforce the act in this administration.”
With over half of the states banning or limiting the use of private funds in elections, Democrats and their allies need another, more reliable way to interfere with the electoral process. In 2020, the left-leaning Center for Tech and Civic Life distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in “safe elections” grants funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The majority of the money went to Democrat-heavy areas in battleground states, and a significant portion was spent on efforts to increase likely-Democrat voter turnout.
“It was an outrageous abuse not only of the rules governing charitable funds, but I believe it was interference in the electoral process,” von Spakovsky stated. “Now [the Biden administration] is saying, ‘We’re going to use the federal government to do that.'”
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What are the specific actions being taken by the Biden administration to increase voter turnout, and why are they seen as potentially violating federal law?
Biden Administration’s Partisan Get-Out-The-Vote Campaign Raises Constitutional Concerns
The Biden administration is actively promoting its partisan get-out-the-vote campaign ahead of the November election, even if it means trampling on the Constitution. Vice President Kamala Harris recently outlined the Democrats’ “four-part strategy” to utilize the full power of the federal government in order to increase votes for Biden, a plan that experts argue violates federal law.
Harris stated that the first part of their strategy involves charging every federal agency to provide Americans with the information they need to know in order to vote when eligible. This approach, however, raises concerns as it appears to be a clear violation of federal law.
The Biden administration seems eager to activate what has been dubbed “Bidenbucks” by utilizing federal agencies and resources to target likely left-leaning voters for the upcoming presidential election. Federal agencies have been enthusiastically carrying out President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which authorizes them to expand voter registration and turnout efforts with the help of ”approved” third-party organizations.
However, the involvement of the executive branch in such matters is not within its jurisdiction. Despite this, the Biden team appears unconcerned about the legal limitations they are pushing against.
One aspect of the four-point strategy involves the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services emailing information on voter registration to everyone who enrolls in the Affordable Care Act, targeting a market of 21 million individuals. The operation has already begun, with the first emails sent out last Friday.
Furthermore, all of the approximately 1,200 Social Security Administration offices nationwide will display signs from vote.gov, the U.S. voter information site. Additionally, vote.gov information will be displayed at all national parks.
The action plan also aims to increase electoral participation among high school and college students by paying them through the Federal Work-Study program to register voters and serve as nonpartisan poll workers. This approach seeks to engage young leaders and fill the void left by the departure of many poll workers for various reasons. However, critics argue that this will only serve to deploy a biased army of students to Democrat strongholds in order to secure votes for Biden and Harris.
The Department of Education has released a memo clarifying that Federal Work-Study funds can be used to support get-out-the-vote activities, such as voter registration and assisting voters at polling places or via a voter hotline. This interpretation, however, contradicts previous regulations.
The DOE now claims that this different interpretation is permissible under the Higher Education Act of 1965, which requires postsecondary institutions to distribute voter registration forms to enrolled students. Critics argue that the Department of Education is twisting the regulations to justify their actions.
Critics have raised concerns that the Biden administration’s use of work-study funds for partisan get-out-the-vote efforts violates the law. Hans von Spakovsky, a constitutional law expert, argues that Congress has not allocated any money to the executive branch for such purposes, making the administration’s actions clear violations of the law.
It is disconcerting that the Biden administration is pushing its partisan agenda at the expense of Constitutional limits. The administration’s approach raises serious concerns about the integrity of the election process and the use of taxpayer dollars for overtly partisan purposes.
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