ANALYSIS: Biden 'is using our tax dollars to try to permanently skew elections' with political campus funding, expert claims
In 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14019, which requires every federal executive agency to provide a detailed plan for how each would aid in increasing voter registration and participation.
Ned Jones, Deputy Director of the Election Integrity Network, has criticized a policy that allows Federal Work Study funds to be spent on university employment of students for get-out-the-vote efforts.
With the 2024 election quickly approaching, an executive order that effectively increases Democratic votes on college campuses, with what one expert claims is a misuse of federal funds, is still in effect.
Back in 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14019 (”Promoting Access to Voting”) in order to promote access to voting materials. Specifically, the executive order requires every federal executive agency to provide a detailed plan for how each would aid in increasing voter registration and participation.
While this plan sounds like a good idea on paper, the language of the act and subsequent actions taken by the Biden administration suggest otherwise.
Ned Jones, Deputy Director of the Election Integrity Network, has criticized a policy that allows Federal Work Study funds to be spent on university employment of students for get-out-the-vote efforts.
He told Campus Reform that, “It’s wrong for federal agencies to use our tax dollars to engage in political campaign activities, run by left-wing organizations who target groups and areas with a high propensity to vote for Democrats.”
“This administration is using our tax dollars to try to permanently skew elections to protect their political power,” Jones added.
Promoting Access to Voting does not specify how the executive order would be enforced. This omission prompted the government watchdog group Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) to submit a FOIA request in 2021 to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain this information.
After not hearing back for 240 days, FGA filed a lawsuit in April 2022—which it won that July when the court ordered that the DOJ was required to turn the documents over to the FGA.
Later that year, the FGA released a statement asserting that the law was unconstitutional “under the Constitution’s ‘Times, Places and Manner of Elections’ clause, which reserves the power of administering and running state elections explicitly to state legislatures.”
The Biden Administration’s stated policy to expand access to election-related activities as stated in the act was taken a step further leading up to the 2022 midterms when the administration suggested that it could be applied to federal funds for work-study programs at universities—which is a key issue.
In an April 2022 letter from the Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE), Michelle Asha Cooper, Ph.D., encouraged universities to engage with this policy by using federal funds to pay students for participating in get-out-to-vote activities such as distributing mail-in ballots and assistance with voter registration as part of Federal Work Study programs.
The problem is that the majority of students vote for progressive candidates—and the Biden Administration knows this.
Numerous polls found that the vast majority of college students voted for Democrats in 2020. In fact, according to Tufts University’s analysis, the increase in voter turnout of college-aged students from 2016 to 2020 played a key role in securing blue victories.
As the 2024 election cycle nears, it is concerning to see that this policy enabling the Biden Administration’s strategy of increasing the number of young Democrat voters with federal funds is still on the books.
Campus Reform reached out to all relevant parties mentioned for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
