Cast as a civil rights measure issued as the nation marked the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” police beatings of voting-rights marchers outside Selma, Ala., the president’s 2021 directive orders every federal agency, more than 600 in all, to register and mobilize voters – particularly “people of color” and others the White House says face “challenges to exercise their fundamental right to vote.” It further orders the agencies to collaborate with ostensibly nonpartisan nonprofits.
Since issuing the order, critics claim, the Biden administration has stonewalled efforts to scrutinize its implementation by often ignoring document requests and litigating to shield relevant records. The critics, including members of Congress, state officials, and government watchdog groups, say the executive branch is attempting to federalize elections with an end-run around constitutionally prescribed state control over voting – in many cases using the resources of agencies with missions unrelated to registering voters.
Some have labeled the president’s order “Bidenbucks,” evoking “Zuckbucks” – Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan’s funneling of some $400 million through two nonprofits into election offices across the country during the 2020 election. That money often flowed to left-leaning nonprofits managing critical aspects of election administration that were considered crucial to Biden’s winning the White House.
In a notable recent defeat for conservatives, Judge Beryl Howell of the D.C. District Court, an Obama appointee to the generally liberal jurisdiction, on July 18 dismissed Freedom of Information Act requests from the America First Legal Foundation, siding with administration arguments that the records in question were exempt as privileged presidential communications. Trying to pry strategy documents loose, America First had sued nearly a dozen non-responsive agencies, ranging from the Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Left-leaning think tank Demos, which in late 2020 drafted a blueprint for the order, estimates that if fully implemented, it could generate 3.5 million new or updated voter registrations annually. Even a far more modest increase could dramatically impact the 2024 presidential election, considering that recent contests have been decided by just thousands of votes in several states.
Critics say the order could violate laws including the Administrative Procedure Act, barring agency actions “in excess of statutory jurisdiction” and the Hatch Act, curbing political activities by federal employees.
Their concerns are driven in part by the fact that the directive appeared to be cribbed from the Demos white paper. Two ex-Demos executives – one of whom helped write the paper – departed for the Biden administration for roles positioning them to push for the order.
Republican House members raised the alarm about this issue in a January 2022 letter requesting documents from administration officials, calling the order “nearly identical to a federal election takeover plan crafted by the radical left-leaning group known as...
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