The Department of Justice appears to be using taxpayer dollars to have jails and the U.S. Marshals Service encourage incarcerated felons and noncitizens to register to vote, according to Mississippi’s leading election official.
On March 6, Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding the DOJ’s compliance with Executive Order 14019, a directive signed by President Biden in March 2021 that ordered hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration by using U.S. taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. Each department was directed to draft “a strategic plan” explaining how it intended to fulfill Biden’s edict, and to collaborate with so-called “nonpartisan third-party organizations” that have been “approved” by the administration to supply “voter registration services on agency premises.”
The DOJ has regularly stonewalled requests for documents related to the order’s implementation, even going as far as to heavily redact any records ordered for release by a federal court.
In his letter, obtained by The Federalist after Fox News first reported it, Watson expressed concern that the DOJ’s efforts to comply with Biden’s order “have led to agencies under [Garland’s] charge attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons and to coopt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.”
Watson said the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) — which falls under the DOJ — is altering existing agreements with jails to comply with Biden’s directive, now requiring these facilities “to provide voter registration materials and facilitate voting by mail.” In December 2021, the USMS modified “936 contracts or intergovernmental agreements and the agency’s information technology,” mandating that USMS officials “notify prisoners upon their admission into USMS custody of their right to request voting access information from their designated facility.”
“This program creates numerous opportunities for ineligible prisoners to be registered to vote in Mississippi,” Watson wrote. “The program provides prisoners with misleading information concerning their right to both register and vote in Mississippi – a right which they may not have.”
Watson raised alarm bells about how these “intergovernmental agreements” push Mississippi jails to coordinate with “other reliable sources of voter information to assist federal prisoners” with voter information and registration processes, noting that his office has never been contacted by these groups or provided their identity. Despite the Biden administration’s best attempts to withhold such information, conservative outlets and good government groups have discovered that many of the so-called “nonpartisan” organizations colluding with federal agencies to register and turn out voters are extremely left-wing, such as Demos and the ACLU.
The Republican secretary also espoused concerns that these policies could further lead to noncitizens registering and voting in elections, highlighting how “everyone in the Marshals’ custody” is provided a form notifying them of their opportunity to partake in the U.S. electoral process. Many illegal border-crossers have found themselves in Marshals’ custody, he explained.
“It is quite shocking, in the midst of a crisis at our southern border and an unprecedented crime wave, that the Biden administration has chosen to expend tax dollars and vital law enforcement resources on a program that risks bloating state voter rolls with ineligible and non-citizen voters,” Watson wrote.
Watson requested Garland halt such policies “unless and until we can ensure only eligible voters receive voter registration information” and provide details about such procedures until the Mississippi secretary of state’s office “can evaluate what damage may have been done to the integrity of Mississippi voter rolls.” He also asked the attorney general to give his office the “name and identifying information of all people who have received Mississippi voter registration materials under this program.”
MS SOS Letter to AG Garland by The Federalist on Scribd
