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As the 2024 presidential election approaches, a 2021 Biden executive order has come under Republican scrutiny. The “Promoting Access to Voting” order empowers every federal agency to boost voter registration and participation. With a Democrat in the White House, some say this could push Democratic candidates to increase their get-out-the-vote efforts.
Conservatives like Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten see this executive order as a maneuver by the federal government to grab more control over elections — in violation of the Constitution, the law, and basic ethics.
In 2021, the president passed an executive order directing every federal agency, more than 600 in all, to register and mobilize voters, with a focus on “people of color” and others the White House says face “challenges to exercise their fundamental right to vote.” He ordered agencies to collaborate with supposedly nonpartisan nonprofits — though virtually all of the supporters of the order are progressive groups.
To understand how monumental this effort could be, consider that 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 more modest increase could dramatically impact the 2024 race, considering recent presidential contests have been decided by just thousands of votes in several states.
This looks like a way for Democrats to use the agencies they control to collude with progressive activists to drive up the Democrat vote with our tax dollars — arguably in violation of the Constitution which leaves elections to the states, and minimally, a slew of laws from the Administrative Procedure Act to the Hatch Act.
