The America First Legal Foundation (AFL) has sued fourteen federal agencies for concealing a secretive Biden regime plan to take over election administration ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
In March of 2021, Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14019, “Promoting Access to Voting,” which called for all 600 federal agencies to submit to a “Strategic Plan” to “expand access to voter registration and election information.”
The order urges the agencies to use “agency materials, websites, online forms, social media platforms, and other points of public access” to educate the public on “how to register to vote”—including “multilingual voter registration and election information”—”how to request a vote-by-mail ballot, and how to cast a ballot in upcoming elections.”
Under the plan, federal agencies are also responsible for distributing voter registration and mail-in ballots, and for “soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and State officials” to provide voter registration services, and to assist voters “in completing voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms.”
As the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted in June, it is unethical to tie federal benefits to election activity, and unconstitutional to have the federal government take authority that belongs to the states.
Mobilizing voters is always a political act. Choosing which groups to target for Get Out The Vote efforts is one of the most important activities done by political campaigns. Federal agencies that interact with the public by doling out benefits can easily pressure recipients to vote for particular candidates and positions. Congress passed the Hatch Act in 1939, which bans bureaucrats and bureaucracies from being involved in election activities after Democrats used Works Progress Administration programs and personnel for partisan political advantage.
Hemingway is the author of the 2021 best seller, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.
“This unprecedented exercise of federal power–without any clear statutory authorization or Constitutional sanction–raises obvious election integrity concerns and triggered a series of Congressional investigations,” AFL stated in a press release Thursday.
The AFL said the Biden regime is using “federal taxpayer dollars to fortify the efforts of Democrat Party-aligned organizations to circumvent newly-passed state election integrity laws.”
Dozens of Republican members of Congress have repeatedly asked for details on this federal takeover of election administration, to no avail, the Federalist reported in June.
Good government groups, members of the media, and private citizens have filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act. Not a single one has been responded to. All signs indicate a concerted effort to keep the public in the dark until at least after the November midterm elections. The lack of transparency and responsiveness is so bad that the Department of Justice and some of its agencies have been repeatedly sued for the information.
According to AFL, 36 Members of Congress on January 19, 2022, requested information from the Biden Administration regarding these “Strategic Plans,” but the Biden Administration refused to comply.
On March 29, 2022, nine ranking Members in the House of Representatives requested information from the Biden Administration, asking for disclosure of the criteria for approving third-party organizations to provide voter registration services on federal premises; a list of approved third party organizations; a list of the states that have requested assistance for voter registration from federal agencies; the approved strategic plans; and the statutory authorities enabling federal agencies to engage in voter registration and share election information have drawn multiple investigations. However, the Biden Administration again refused to comply.
On June 10, 2022, AFL requested the Strategic Plans. But AFL has received responses only from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Small Business Administration—which claimed their document did not exist—and the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs—which claimed the “Strategic Plans” were privileged and withheld them entirely.
The AFL vowed to “keep fighting for disclosure, and to ensure our elections are free, fair, and lawful.”
“The Biden Administration appears to be using the levers of bureaucratic power and significant taxpayer resources to promote its radical leftist agenda in elections this fall and beyond,” said Gene Hamilton, AFL Vice-President and General Counsel in a statement. “We will uncover their detailed plans and reveal to the American people how their money is being diverted from core governmental functions towards left-wing political causes.”