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Executive Order 14019 was signed by President Joe Biden in March 2021, during his first 100 days in office. The order empowers federal agencies to engage in Get Out the Vote measures for federal, state, and local elections, including in federal prisons. It is telling that you cannot access the executive order on White House dot gov. However, the United States Employment Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has fully overviewed and outlined the purpose behind this EO and the implementation plan.
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Executive Order 14019, Promoting Access to Voting, states the Administration's policy to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections. The Executive Order also asserts the Federal Government's responsibility to expand access to, and education about, voter registration and election information, and to combat misinformation, to enable all eligible Americans to participate in our democracy.
Describing the right to vote as "fundamental" and as "the foundation of American democracy," the Executive Order notes the challenges encountered by many Americans who seek to exercise that right, including people of color, individuals with limited English proficiency, people with disabilities, members of the military serving overseas, and other American citizens living abroad. The Executive Order identifies several legal authorities that protect and promote the right to vote, including the U.S. Constitution, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
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Republican state attorneys general are pushing back through lawfare.Quote:
On Tuesday, attorneys general from nine states Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota filed a federal lawsuit asking a U.S. district court in Wichita, Kansas, to shut down an executive order that is using federal agencies to register and mobilize left-leaning voters, with the assistance of White House-approved leftist organizations. Among the charges, the complaint alleges the Biden administration has usurped the appropriating power of Congress, which did not grant the executive branch authority to fund the unprecedented GOTV initiative.
"We're not going to stand by and let the federal government get turned into a giant voter turnout machine for Democrats. We're going to make sure you follow the law," Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen told me in an interview this week. "You've got an executive branch that is far exceeding the authority that has been given to them. This is something that's never been done before at the federal level."
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That's because, as the AGs argue in the federal lawsuit, the executive branch cannot "take money Congress allocated and reuse it for improper purposes." And they certainly cannot do so without following the laws that establish procedures laid out by Congress. Biden and crew also can't encroach on the state's sovereign rights over the administration of elections, including registering voters.
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Known action by the Biden-Harris administration, combined with secrecy, "creates an impression" that the federal government has its "thumb on the scales" for the Nov. 5 presidential election, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach says.
Kobach, a Republican, is leading a multistate lawsuit to strike down President Joe Biden's 2021 executive order on elections.
"It appears it could be designed to register more Democrats than Republicans," Kobach said of Biden's order in a phone interview Wednesday with The Daily Signal.
The Kansas attorney general referred to a March letter, cited in footnotes in the lawsuit, from Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and other Senate Democrats to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland about voter registration through the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
"Durbin's letter is applauding registration in prisons, and prisoners have disproportionately been Democrats," Kobach told The Daily Signal.
We are so screwed.
