Why The Feds Should Have No Place In Voter Registration Efforts

It is both law and common sense that government power should stay out of political campaigns. The federal Hatch Act is one example of a law that upholds this principle by prohibiting partisanship in federal agencies. Of course, there are gray areas. The erstwhile Biden Administration took advantage of this to push federal agencies into politics, setting a dangerous precedent. Just hours after his inauguration, President Trump revoked that Biden policy and restored the separation of electioneering and state.

In March 2021, Biden signed Executive Order 14019. Entitled “Promoting Access to Voting,” the order made it a federal “responsibility … to expand access to, and education about, voter registration and election information.” It required all federal agencies to “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” The order specifically required the Federal Bureau of Prisons to assist inmates with registering to vote.

This may sound innocuous to those not involved with the inner workings of political campaigns. To cast a ballot, a person must be registered to vote. That’s a government process. So what’s the problem with federal agencies getting involved?

Campaign operatives know better. “Voter registration is the groundwork that underpins any path to electoral victory,” according to Higher Ground Labs, which funds leftist political startups. Political campaigns and their allies actively work to register voters and then get them to vote, focusing on people likely to support their own preferred candidates. These voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns can make the difference in close elections.

Consider the innocuous sounding Voter Participation Center. The group’s only purpose is to register voters, and it claims to be nonpartisan. Yet its president, Tom Lopach, built his career working for Sen. Ted Kennedy and was executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In an exposé last year, The Washington Free Beacon showed that the Voter Participation Center had carefully targeted its work to avoid registering voters who might lean Republican. This included telling Facebook not to show the group’s voter registration ads to people interested in NASCAR or golf.

On its website, the Voter Participation Center acknowledges that it’s not trying to register all Americans. Rather it’s focused on what it calls the “New American Majority—young people, people of color and unmarried women.” Of course, these demographic groups tend to vote for Democrats (although Trump made significant gains, especially with young men).

The trouble with government agencies running voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote campaigns is that it’s very easy to benefit one party or the other. This could happen by accident, but could also be the result of top-down directives or individual government employees. It might also be impossible to detect such intentional partisanship, especially prior to an election. Consider that it took a series of leaks before The Daily Wire could verify suspicions that some FEMA staff were refusing to help Trump supporters in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.

Across federal agencies, there are countless lists of Americans. These include farmers and ranchers, school employees, recipients of various welfare programs, and people with student loans. Obviously, some of these lists include people who are much more likely to support one political party or the other. Many also include demographic data—the exact kind of information political campaigns use to find and target their most likely supporters.

Do Americans really want Democrats turning welfare programs into get-out-the-vote campaigns? Should Republicans turn around and use government programs to register and turn out rural voters?

Thankfully, President Trump refused to simply turn the tables. He rejected Biden’s precedent and made overturning Executive Order 14019 one of his first acts in office. This is even more laudable given that high voter turnout helped Trump win the recent election (as predicted by Prof. Ilya Somin earlier last year).

Political parties, campaigns, and other allied groups have a strong interest in registering voters and getting out the vote. These are inherently political activities. Federal government agencies have too much power and too many interested parties to be trusted dabbling in such things. All Americans owe President Trump thanks for rebuilding the wall of separation between electioneering and state.

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Trent England is the founder and executive director of Save Our States.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.