The Biden administration is paying college students to register voters and man the polls this November. Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Work-Study (FWS) Program will now pay university and college students to register others to vote and to serve as poll workers, as part of a government effort to increase student voter turnout. “We have been doing work to promote voter participation for students,” Harris stated. “For example, we have, under the Federal Work-Study Program, now allow [sic] students to get paid through Federal Work-Study to register people and to be non-partisan poll workers.”
The vice president’s announcement comes on the heels of the Department of Education issuing a memo disclosing that college students will be eligible for FWS funding “for employment by a Federal, State, local, or Tribal public agency for civic engagement work that is not associated with a particular interest or group…” The federal agency added, “This work can include supporting broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration, providing voter assistance at a polling place or through a voter hotline, or serving as a poll worker.”
In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter said, “The Biden administration’s use of the federal work-study program to fund an army of part-time election staffers for their 2024 campaign is an obvious abuse of taxpayer resources and a potential violation of the Hatch Act.” He continued, “With countless examples of failures of election administration and even outright fraud, an administration as scandal-plagued and unpopular as the current one should be doing everything in their power to assuage concerns about the integrity of the upcoming 2024 election. Instead, they shamelessly convert federal programs into voter registration initiatives.”
The Biden administration’s new plan follows growing concern among Americans surrounding election integrity, particularly in light of politically-motivated efforts to thwart a 2024 victory for former President Donald Trump. Thus far, a total of four criminal indictments have been leveled against the 45th President by left-wing prosecutors and Biden’s Justice Department, the FBI has raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, and the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering whether or not Colorado has the authority to bar Trump from appearing on ballots in November.
According to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, nearly 60% of voters think that Democrats “are using the legal system in a biased to way to take out a political opponent” in targeting Trump. The same amount think that the Supreme Court should put Trump back on the Colorado ballot, and a majority (50-54%) would still vote for Trump even if he were convicted of the charges against him.
The Biden administration’s move to pay students to register voters also comes as Trump is gaining on the incumbent Joe Biden among young voters in polls. An Axios/Generation Lab Youth survey released this month reported that 52% of voters 18 to 34 plan to vote for Biden, while 48% intend to vote for Trump. This is a significant shift from the 2020 presidential election outcome, when Biden garnered nearly two-thirds (60% according to NBC News, 59% according to the Pew Research Center) of the vote from those aged 18 to 29, while Trump earned roughly a third (36% according to NBC News, 35% according to the Pew Research Center) among the same demographic. Other recent polls have shown Trump leading Biden among voters by four to six percentage points.
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
