On May 16, The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project “released two memorandums detailing the partisan-based evidence surrounding” President Biden’s Executive Order 14019, signed on March 7, 2021, which “directs federal agencies to promote access to voting.” The Oversight Project also released “key documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)—highlighting the federal government’s use of federal tax payers dollars for partisan get-out-the-vote efforts.”
You can read more at the website of The Oversight Project.
I am asking Republican elected officials and candidates to do something about this: Speak out against this, mention this in your campaign material and in your campaign ads, and overall educate our Wisconsin voters as to how President Biden is using our taxpayer $$ against conservatives.
Excerpted below is a report from Blaze News about this Heritage Oversight Project effort. You can read the entire Blaze News article here: Blaze News exclusive: Heritage Oversight Project exposes Biden’s ‘election interference’ scheme, identifies 3 ways states can fight back
Blaze News exclusive: Heritage Oversight Project exposes Biden’s ‘election interference’ scheme, identifies 3 ways states can fight back
Joseph MacKinnon 5/16/2024
The Oversight Project has, however, finally got its hands on various agencies’ strategic plans along with internal communications about the executive order and correspondences with leftist NGOs.
Newly released and largely redacted documents detail some of the lengths to which federal agencies are going to mobilize friendly voter turnout per the EO, such as guaranteeing federal employees four hours of paid administrative leave per election to go vote or participate as supposedly non-partisan poll watchers. In the documents, there are also indications of internal concern over executing Biden’s will while avoiding brazen violations of the Hatch Act.
While some proposals in the documents are relatively innocuous, those promising to be most impactful appear to be geared toward boosting Democratic numbers, as the Oversight Project previously indicated.
Among the documents obtained by the Oversight Project is a 2021 recommendation to the Department of Education from various Democrat-aligned groups, such as the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, suggesting that it include “check-the-box” automatic voter registration for individuals applying for federal financial aid via the Free Application for Federal Student Aid process. The activistic outfits note in their recommendation that the Office of Federal Student Aid presently has the contact information of 20 million Americans enrolled in post-secondary institutions.
Non-college-educated voters lean Republican, whereas voters with college degrees are much more likely to lean toward the Democratic Party, according to Pew. 20 million email addresses and automatic registries could go a long way in a tight race.
The Oversight Project has indicated that it will continue to populate its repository of “Biden Bucks” documents as they become available.
Counteroffensive
When pressed on whether Congress could take meaningful action against the scheme, [Mike] Howell, [executive director of the Oversight Project,] responded, “Congress missed their shot. Ship sailed. They funded this.”
States, alternatively, could throw a wrench in the works.
The Oversight Project outlined three ways that states could go about doing so, the first of which is attacking the application of the order with regard to presidential elections.
“Presidential elections are governed by the Electors clause of the Constitution, which by its text and original understanding gives zero warrant for Congressional action. States are well within their powers to pass laws solely governing presidential elections,” wrote the Oversight Project. “To be sure, different procedures for Presidential Elections impose increased administrative burdens and costs, but those are justified by insulating at least that electoral process from partisan Executive Branch action.”
States could also raise hell about the “partisan political activity inherent in the plans and actions of the federal employees involved.”
Complaints citing possible Hatch Act violations could potentially frustrate the scheme or at the very least force the administration to speak to its meddling.
Finally, the Oversight Project highlighted how “Section 7 of the [National Voter Registration Act] provides that ‘Federal and nongovernmental offices’ can only engage in the type of activities directed by the Executive Order if a state ‘designate[s]’ that office to act as a voter registration agency.”
“States could take all appropriate action to remove and attack designations of federal agencies to act under the NVRA that States did not make, or that were made by State officials without appropriate authority,” wrote the Oversight Project, stressing that college campuses and state prisons would be worth scrutinizing.
‘Executive Order 14019 raises significant challenges for our nation’s system of checks and balances that the framers carefully crafted in the Constitution to guard against attempts by the executive branch to circumvent the legislative process.’
Howell and his team at the Oversight Project are hardly outliers in figuring the so-called “Biden Bucks” scheme for a “threat to election integrity.”
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee noted in their Monday letter to Shalanda Young, the director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, “Ensuring the safe and secure administration of elections and access for all legal voters is critical, but the authority to engage in such efforts is expressly delegated to the states and the Congress by the Constitution.”
