Ask court to stop Biden-Harris administration from abusing taxpayer-funded government agencies to run one-sided voter registrations
by MFE staff writer | August 15, 2024
Nine states filed a lawsuit on August 13, asking a federal court in Kansas to declare a presidential executive order unconstitutional and unlawful and to enjoin (stop) all agencies from implementing the order. President Joe Biden’s 2021 Executive Order 14019 commands government agencies to deviate from their charters and engage in voter registration.
According to a media release, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen led the coalition of nine attorneys general “in challenging the Biden-Harris administration’s unlawful voter registration scheme that turns federal agencies into voter registration organizations and puts the integrity of the country’s elections at risk.”
Knudsen’s release stated that Executive Order 14019 was written by left-wing advocacy groups and unlawfully directs federal agencies and departments to conduct voter registration activities, misusing money Congress gave them for other purposes. “The federal government has limited authority to regulate voter registration as that is a power granted primarily to the states by Congress and the United States Constitution.”
“Fair elections are an essential part of our country’s Republic. Congress gave the states the power to oversee elections years ago,” AG Knudsen said.
I will not stand by while the Biden-Harris administration attempts to shamelessly garner votes by employing its own agencies to register voters and disregard states own voter registration systems, putting the integrity of our elections at risk.
According to the lawsuit (Case 6:24-cv-01141),
Congress allocates funds to Cabinet Offices and Agencies to do the work that those parts of the Executive Branch are tasked with. But President Biden issued an executive order—an order allegedly drafted by a progressive activist group—tasking the whole of government to use those funds in ways that Congress never contemplated—at the risk of violating federal and State laws.
The lawsuit also alleges, the agencies implementing that order “seem to be doing so without following any of the procedures laid out by Congress.”
By way of example, it states that the U.S. Attorney General “is registering imprisoned felons to vote—but there was never notice nor comment on that policy to allow the public to weigh in on whether that is right. And in many States, felons voting is illegal. Because the U.S. Attorney General failed to follow neutral processes the likelihood of potential conflicts between federal action and State laws is heightened.”
The case emphasizes that the Attorneys General are all avid supporters of voting rights and voter registration efforts. “But the Biden-Harris Administration must follow the law. Agencies 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.”
EO 14019 involves “a strike against a core attribute of the States’ sovereignty: voting,” the nine state plaintiffs declared.
The relentless federal encroachment on the States’ sovereign prerogatives often brings the federal Executive Branch’s encroachment on the legislative role that the Constitution leaves entirely to Congress. U.S. Const. art. I, § 1.
The nine states filing suit were Montana, Kansas, Iowa, South Dakota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, Wichita Division.
Patrice Johnson, Michigan Fair Elections chairman, hailed the lawsuit, saying, “To have a political party in power co-opt federal or state agencies to register select constituents is a recipe for tyranny. The temptation to insert bias is simply too great. That is why Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution specifically assigns the power to regulate elections to elected state legislators, not to the federal government. We don’t need government dictators deciding who should register and vote.”
Johnson said Biden’s executive order “threatens the integrity of our elections.”
She pointed out that after Michigan enacted automatic voter registration and joined the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), "our voter rolls have spun out of control. We now have more registered voters than our voting aged population. That’s impossible, but it's the mess we’re in.”
Johnson stated that most other states have registered 69% of their voting aged population.
“The problem is that compromised voter rolls open the door to compromised elections."
Source: CheckMyVote.org
MFE’s Soles to Rolls program works with CheckMyVote.org to clean the rolls of moved, deceased, duplicate, ghost, and noncitizen registrations. “About 400 volunteers in MFE’s Soles to Rolls program are hard at work in 37 Michigan counties, including 18 of the largest 20.” Johnson said, and she encouraged anyone interested in volunteering to contact MFE at contact@mifairelections.org.
Other lawsuits
This is not the first time Biden’s order has been challenged in court.
On Aug. 1, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft also filed a federal lawsuit challenging President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order. Ashcroft argued that the executive order is “a blatant and unlawful effort to use taxpayer money to help elect Democratic candidates....”
He said the order “constitutes federal overreach and violates the principles of federalism enshrined in the Constitution. [I]t is the responsibility of the states, not the federal government, to manage voter registration and election procedures.”
Last month, America First Policy Institute, sued the Biden administration alongside Texas legislators and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R). The lawsuit claims the order violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and other federal laws.
In January, Pennsylvania GOP legislators filed a lawsuit challenging Biden’s executive order and some state voting policies, invoking the independent state legislature theory, which argues only state legislatures can regulate federal elections. After the lawsuit was dismissed by a district court, citing lack of standing, the legislators filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court in April, asking them to reopen the case.
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