Months from the 2024 presidential election, Americans remain mostly in the dark about a sweeping executive order Joe Biden signed early in his presidency that could swing the entire contest in his favor. New bombshell documents obtained by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project reinforce that is precisely the point of the directive — and the administration is working in cahoots with left-wing activist groups to achieve it.
In March 2021, President Biden signed an “Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting.” The administration inked the directive, apparently the brainchild of leftist think-tank Demos, to cheers from dozens of like-minded but officially nonpartisan nongovernmental organizations.
As I have been reporting at RealClearInvestigations, Executive Order 14019 mandates that every single federal agency register and mobilize voters with the express intent of increasing election participation among minority groups that tend to vote disproportionately Democrat. In pursuit of its aims, the order calls on agencies to “solicit[] and facilitat[e] approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations … to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”
That language has raised alarm bells among the right, who suspect the leftist groups supportive of the order — that may be unconstitutional or violate several laws — could coordinate with agencies to implement it and increase registration only of Democrat voters.
Such an effort could well prove decisive. A since-deleted but archived Demos analysis indicates that, if fully implemented, the order could lead to 3.5 million new or updated voter registrations annually — a massive figure considering recent presidential elections have been decided by mere thousands of votes in a handful of states.
Bombshell Memo
Details from a July 2021 listening session the Department of Justice (DOJ) conducted with leftist activists about implementing the order, revealed for the first time in a May 1 Oversight Project memo, suggest fears of collusion between federal agencies and leftist activist groups are more than merited. The details come from a set of unredacted notes taken by a DOJ attorney.
During those proceedings, Biden administration officials heard from activists overwhelmingly from the left. According to its review of the listening session roster, the Oversight Project found that “Every participant whose party affiliation or political donation history could be identified by the Oversight Project was identified as a Democrat except for one Green Party member.”
Here were some of their recommendations, as recounted by the unnamed Justice Department official:
- Keeda Haynes of The Sentencing Project indicated that eligible voters who are incarcerated “have been left out of voting,” and emphasized that those held in pretrial custody also have the right to vote. Haynes proposed a variety of ways the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) could provide voter registration information during prisoner admission, orientation training, and various other touch points with prison personnel. She also recommended that authorities “provide in-person voting options, such as voting machines” at facilities where “eligible voters” reside. “Felony disenfranchisement is voter suppression,” the DOJ attorney recorded.
- Dana Paikowsky of the Campaign Legal Center indicated a desire to “develop infrastructure in jails and prisons and also help people understand their eligibility after they are released.” She related that her organization remained “concerned about BOP’s focus on voter registration only, and only on individuals from ME, VT, and DC. Felons in Puerto Rico are also eligible to vote. In Mississippi, don’t lose right to vote for federal convictions, and AL also has some eligibility. Those individuals with convictions for federal misdemeanors can usually vote, too.”
- Terry Minnis of Asian Americans Advancing Justice pushed not only for agencies to create multi-lingual materials pertaining to voting, but for making “voter registration info mandatory at naturalization ceremonies.”
- Michelle Bishop of the National Disability Rights Network reportedly called on increasing the access to vote for people in long-term care facilities — without any apparent concern suffering patients could be taken advantage of by partisan operatives.
- Nik Youngsmith of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund seemed to acknowledge that under the order, noncitizens could be registered to vote, noting “Federal employees need to know who should be properly registered and not. Don’t want someone to face charges for registering based on bad info.”
The documents obtained by the Oversight Project date back to a July 2021 meeting, yet represent something of a major revelation in May 2024. That illustrates how surreptitious this effort has been.
Administration Partnering with Leftist Groups
Although the Biden administration has stonewalled congressional Republicans over the strategic plans each agency was to develop in accordance with the order, evidence has slowly emerged through primarily conservative media reportage and watchdog groups’ Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation, suggesting the administration took the groups’ suggestions to heart.
In January, The Daily Signal reported that BOP “has partnered with and regularly consults on voting issues with the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee” — several of which were represented at the July 2021 listening session — in connection with the executive order. A BOP spokesman detailed that the bureau had partnered with such groups to offer “civics education classes” and “voter registration drives” at several correctional facilities nationwide.
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson wrote a letter in March to Attorney General Merrick Garland raising concerns that under Executive Order 14019, the U.S. Marshals Service was being directed to “modify agreements with jails” to mandate that they “provide voter registration materials and facilitate voting by mail,” on top of requiring the DOJ “to facilitate voter registration and mail voting for individuals in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons.” According to Watson, this could lead to not only ineligible voters but among them noncitizens — including illegal aliens — being encouraged to illegally register to vote.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is working to register voters at naturalization ceremonies. Other agencies ranging from the Departments of Housing and Urban Development to Labor and Agriculture have also been executing plans to register voters who favor Democrats.
In connection with a federal lawsuit challenging the order brought by 27 Pennsylvania state legislators, the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) — which has sued the Biden administration to unearth documents and communications associated with the order — filed an amicus brief asserting that:
all of the federal agencies FGA has identified as taking active steps to carry out EO 14019 have one thing in common: They provide government welfare benefits and other services to groups of voters the vast majority of which have historically voted Democrat.
The House Small Business Committee recently subpoenaed the Small Business Administration (SBA) over its stonewalling regarding an agreement the agency came to with all-important swing state Michigan to “promote civic engagement and voter registration” — including through allowing state officials to engage in in-person voter registration efforts at SBA’s business outreach events.
Consistent with FGA’s brief, Fox News reported that:
An investigation by the House Small Business Committee found that 22 out of 25 such outreach events have taken place in counties with the highest population of Democratic National Committee (DNC) target demographics.
Meanwhile, 11 of 15 Michigan counties that showed the largest voter registration increase over the last year have ranked highest in population of young voters and Black voters, according to the committee — two of the left’s most-sought voting blocs.
To the extent the Biden administration is using the full resources of the federal government to turn out Democrat voters under the facially nonpartisan guise of expanding the franchise to allegedly underrepresented groups, this would echo Democrats’ related efforts to use nonprofit organizations to achieve the same. As I recently reported at RealClearInvestigations, at least one major Democrat Super PAC has written to donors that:
501(c)(3) voter registration focused on underrepresented groups in the electorate would be the ‘single most effective tactic for ensuring Democratic victories’ – ‘4 to 10 times more cost-effective’ on after-tax basis at ‘garnering additional Democratic votes’ relative to alternatives like ‘broadcast media and digital buys.’
In recent election cycles, Democrat fat cats and dark-money vehicles have given hundreds of millions of dollars to left-leaning, state-based voter registration organizations targeting demographics that tend to vote Democrat in pivotal states. These outfits have arguably flouted IRS restrictions on charities engaging in political activity by targeting their “nonpartisan” electioneering activities toward populations likely to vote blue.
As reported, at least two recipients of grants under the Everybody Votes Campaign — the left’s preferred vehicle for driving out voters via 501(c)(3)s — were listed on an email as participants at the July 2021 listening session.
Legal Challenge’s Urgency
With the 2024 election fast approaching and the Biden administration executive order beinge implemented, Pennsylvania legislators’ challenge to it has taken greater urgency. Several weeks ago a district court judge dismissed the case on standing grounds. On April 23, the legislators filed a petition for writ of certiorari at the Supreme Court, and asked the court to expedite the case.
The legislators believe the executive order violates state laws “prohibiting the influence of outside organizations in election operations” enacted over concerns regarding the influence of “Zuckerbucks” — private financing of public election administration from the Zuckerberg-Chan Foundation — during the 2020 election. In their motion urging the Supreme Court to swiftly take up the case, the legislators explain that Congress neither authorized the executive action nor appropriated funding for it, and that Pennsylvania law therefore bars such voter registration activities.
When the relevant law was introduced, its sponsor’s memo “explained the need to prevent public officials from partnering with third party non-governmental organizations ‘for the registration of voters or the preparation, administration or conducting of an election in this Commonwealth.’”
“Exactly what the legislators sought to prevent through their law-making authority has now been facilitated by executive action by the President who is also a candidate in the 2024 election and, as such, stands to benefit personally from the executive action,” the legislators wrote.
Time will tell whether the Supreme Court will hear their case, rule that they do in fact have standing, and thereby give them a chance to seek an injunction that would halt the executive order before voting begins. Even then, much damage will have been done.
