(The Federalist) 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.
