Expert: Biden Admin Using Federal Agencies and Left-Wing NGOs to Illegally Amass Votes

Last week, it was reported that the Biden administration is utilizing at least one federal agency to collude with left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in an effort to conduct get-out-the-vote campaigns. Experts say the administration’s actions violate federal law.

On February 20, news broke that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) worked directly with an NGO known as Demos to increase voter turnout. Demos’s website states that it is “committed to racial justice” through “research, litigation, [and] strategic communications” in order to “build power with and for Black and brown communities.”

Demos’s stated policy positions include “climate equity,” defined as “[c]limate change solutions” that “must address racial and economic inequity/inequality” and “debt-free college,” among other left-wing causes. But as described by Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, perhaps most troubling is Demos’s activism against election integrity.

“They’ve been around for quite a while,” he explained on “Washington Watch” last week. “In fact, I dealt with them 20 years ago when I was working at [DOJ] during the Bush administration. Demos is one of these organizations that’s against any and all kinds of election reforms. They’re against voter ID — they don’t want voter registration lists cleaned up. They believe that aliens should be given the right to vote. I mean, you, you name it. And they’re on the wrong position on every issue entirely involved in election integrity. So having them involved in [get-out-the-vote efforts] is … a good move for [the Biden administration] politically, but a bad move for anyone who believes in honest elections.”

Observers have noted that in March 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order (EO) stating that federal agencies “shall consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” In January 2022, House Republicans sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget pointing out that Biden’s EO “is nearly identical to a federal election takeover plan crafted by the radical left-leaning group known as Demos.”

As von Spakovsky underscored, the EO “reaches all levels and every single department of the executive branch [telling] every single department to come up with a strategic plan … to engage in voter registration with any and all individuals that you deal with and to help them with their voting process, obtaining absentee ballots, etc. And of course, one, [Biden] doesn’t have the authority to do this. Two, he’s never been authorized [to] provide any funding with this.”

But the “biggest problem,” von Spakovsky contended, is how Biden is leveraging government benefits for political gain. “Assume that you are, for example, applying for Social Security disability benefits. And the clerk you are dealing with says, ‘Oh, by the way, we may want to be sure that you get registered to vote. Oh, and here, I want to help you with your absentee ballot.’ Well, the people that apply for benefits for the federal government are often elderly, disabled, very vulnerable. What’s their thought going to be? ‘Boy, I better vote the way. The White House would like me to vote. I better vote to support Democrats who control the government, otherwise I might not get my benefits.’”

Von Spakovsky further noted that despite The Heritage Foundation and other organizations’ attempts to gather information about the administration’s actions through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the administration has not been forthcoming.

“[T]he White House and the [DOJ] have been fighting all attempts to turn over any of this information,” he explained. “In fact, lots of litigation lawsuits have been filed to try to force them to provide it because they don’t want to do it. And by the way, part of the order … was that they should contract with third-party organizations to help them with this voter registration. Well, they certainly aren’t going to contract with any conservative organizations. All they’re doing is going to their political allies, left-wing advocacy groups, to help them do that. In essence, what they are doing is moving the get-out-the-vote campaign — that normally political parties and campaigns have to pay for — into the federal government and having the federal government get out the vote for Joe Biden and his political party and his candidates.”

Furthermore, von Spakovsky argued that Biden’s action constitutes a violation of the Hatch Act, a 1939 law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in specific forms of political activity.

“[W]ho is supposed to enforce violations of the Hatch Act? Why the U.S. Department of Justice under the control of Merrick Garland,” von Spakovsky emphasized. “And you and I both know that they are not going to in any way. In fact, they haven’t objected to this executive order [or] put up any opposition to it. And they certainly aren’t going to go after any of the bureaucrats or political appointees within different departments, like the Department of Agriculture, who are engaging in partisan political activities to carry out this executive order. That’s just not going to happen.”