Nearly three years have passed since President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14019, an overreaching directive aimed at inserting the federal government into state election administration.
While deceptively marketed as a heroic effort to enhance “American democracy,” Biden’s directive is far more partisan than the White House and regime-aligned media are willing to admit. The order instructed hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in the electoral process by using U.S. taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. More specifically, federal departments were told to collaborate with so-called “nonpartisan third-party organizations” that have been “approved” by the administration to supply “voter registration services on agency premises.”
Despite the administration’s attempt to stonewall requests for — and heavily redact — documents related to the order’s implementation, conservative media outlets and good government groups have obtained communications revealing that many of the supposedly “nonpartisan” groups colluding with federal agencies on voter registration efforts are extremely left-wing.
Among these organizations is Demos, a left-wing advocacy group seeking to advance the Democrat Party’s political agenda. According to InfluenceWatch, the group has “close ties” to the faction of the Democrat Party “associated with” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., signed a petition backing the Green New Deal, and is staffed with Democrat operatives. The left-wing American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, is also among those working with federal agencies to register new voters.
As The Federalist has previously reported, voter registration efforts are almost always a partisan venture and often involve left-wing groups that abuse their nonprofit status to target likely-Democrat voters. (Congressional Democrats have voted down Republican-backed legislation aimed at repealing Biden’s directive.)
Biden’s unprecedented use of taxpayer dollars to run highly partisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote operations to the benefit of Democrats is unlikely to instill confidence in American voters, whose trust in the electoral process was shaken following the chaotic and irregular 2020 election. Here are just a few of the many federal agencies engaged in the scheme and how each is using “Bidenbucks” to rig the 2024 election in Biden and Democrats’ favor.
1. Office of Personnel Management
In March 2022, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced it will allow federal employees to take up to four hours of “administrative leave” to vote in any U.S. election. The agency further granted these workers the same amount of time to serve as poll workers or observers, should they choose to do so.
The guidance is a departure from previous OPM policy, which granted leave to federal workers “on election day only” and permitted them “to access paid time off in limited circumstances based on [their] work schedule and the polling hours in their community.” When announcing the change in policy, OPM said it “recognizes that voting has evolved beyond a single election day” and claimed the new guidance would limit supposed “barriers to voting.”
During the 2020 election, the vast majority of political donations from federal employees went to Democrat candidates, according to data published by OpenSecrets. For example, of the $2.36 million in political contributions from Department of Justice employees in the 2020 election cycle, $2.02 million (87.6 percent) went to Democrats while only $286,083 (12.4 percent) went to Republicans.
2. Department of Education
The Education Department’s role in carrying out Biden’s executive order is unsurprising, given Democrats’ increased focus on courting young voters. During the 2022 midterms, for example, this 18-29 age demographic broke heavily for Democrat candidates over Republican ones by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.
In April 2022, the agency’s Office of Postsecondary Education told universities they are required under the Higher Education Act of 1965 to “make a good faith effort” to make mail voter registration forms “widely available” to their students and informed colleges that they may use work-study funds — which are used to provide part-time campus jobs to help students with tuition costs — to pay students to “support voter registration activities.” These institutions were additionally instructed to expand their roles in the electoral process, such as by becoming voting sites and supplying locations for ballot drop boxes.
As The Federalist noted the same year, “Having taxpayers fund get-out-the-vote activities that support Democrats in this way had previously not been allowed.”
Most recently, the Education Department released a “toolkit” that includes guidelines for universities on how to increase voter registration and turnout on their campuses. The document also contains guidance for K-12 institutions, such as recommendations that schools “[d]etermine if [their] state allows pre-registration for individuals under 18 years old and, if so, identify opportunities for high school students to do so.”
3. Department of Health and Human Services
In June 2023, The Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas reported that the Indian Health Service (IHS), which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services, is collaborating with the ACLU, Demos, and several other left-wing organizations to register new voters. In order to expand the reach of these efforts, the Biden administration designated an Arizona-based Indian Health Service (IHS) facility as an official voter registration hub in October.
According to Arizona Democrat Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Native Health of Phoenix, which caters to “urban Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and all other individuals,” will “assist individuals in the voter registration process.” The administration confirmed that the IHS facility would be one of five designated as voter registration sites by the end of 2023.
Much like young voters, Native Americans heavily favor Democrats.
4. Department of Agriculture
The USDA is another federal agency directing its efforts at potential Democrat voters. Earlier this month, emails obtained by The Daily Signal show the agency was colluding with Demos as early as August 2021 to work on turning out voters.
As The Federalist’s M.D. Kittle reported, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service “encourages all state agencies administering the child nutrition programs to provide local program operators with promotional materials, including voter registration and non-partisan, non-campaign election information, to disseminate among voting-age program participants and their families.”
One of the “ideas” recommended by the agency is for “[s]chool food authorities administering the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in high schools, and adult day care centers and emergency shelters participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to promote voter registration and election information among voting-age participants and use congregate feeding areas, such as cafeterias, or food distribution sites, as sites for the dissemination of information.”
5. Department of Homeland Security
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency within DHS, announced an update to its Policy Manual in August, which included provisions directing agency employees to “increase awareness and expand access to voter registration during naturalization ceremonies,” in which eligible immigrants officially become U.S. citizens. Studies have indicated a voting preference among legal immigrants for Democrat candidates over Republican ones.
The guidelines specifically instructed USCIS to provide newly ordained citizens “access to voter registration services” at these ceremonies and additional information “regarding points-of-contact for voting and voter registration.” Agency employees were also tasked with requesting local or state election officials “attend ceremonies to distribute, collect, and review voter registration applications, and to officially register new citizens to vote.” In the absence of said officials, USCIS must “coordinate” with “nongovernmental organizations” — that are presumably “approved” by the administration — to provide these same services.
6. Department of Labor
In fulfillment of Biden’s directive, the Labor Department issued guidance in March 2022 “to all 50 states and the nation’s territories encouraging them to designate more than 2,300 locally operated American Job Centers as voter registration agencies.” The agency specifically noted how “partners that operate programs and services” with these centers “can engage in voter registration efforts with their participants,” such as hosting so-called “nonpartisan organizations” to facilitate get-out-the-vote activities.
The list of “eligible partners” includes the WIOA Title I Youth Programs, YouthBuild Programs, and Indian and Native America Programs — all of which cater to demographics likely to vote for Democrats.
7. Department of Veterans Affairs
The Department of Veterans Affairs initially distributed a survey to more than 12 million veterans and their families “to better understand Veterans’ experience with the voter registration process, and to better assist Veterans in addressing and overcoming any challenges.” By September 2022, the agency expanded its voter registration efforts by partnering with Kentucky, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to “create a pilot voter registration program that provides voter registration information, materials and — if requested — assistance to Veterans, eligible dependents and caregivers at select VA facilities.”
The VA was flagged as one of several agencies “on the right track” in a “progress report” published by left-wing groups (including Demos and the ACLU) that measured how effectively departments are complying with Biden’s directive.
8. Department of the Interior
The Interior Department (DOI) is also adequately fulfilling Biden’s order, according to the metrics laid out in a report published by leftist groups.
The analysis specifically highlighted how DOI provided “high-quality voter registration services” to individuals who attended two agency-sponsored “tribal educational institutions” in Kansas and New Mexico. Those two institutions — the Haskell Indian Nations University and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute — have since been designated as voter registration sites.
“DOI has moved to ensure that eligible students who attend these institutions have regular access to high-quality voter registration services,” the report reads. “Notably, DOI is improving access to registration and voting among a population that has long been excluded—Native Americans.”
9. Department of the Treasury
The Treasury Department has incorporated voter registration efforts “into the services provided through the tax clinic assistance program, Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA), which provides tax assistance to low income individuals across the county,” according to the same “progress report.” The agency further moved to require “all grantees who receive federal funding to administer these tax clinic assistance programs” to offer voter registration services.
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