Republicans Demand Biden Administration Release Voter Registration Plans: “Trying to Hide Something”
EXCLUSIVE — Republican lawmakers are pressing 12 executive agencies to reveal their plans to increase
voter turnout
as the Biden administration refuses to disclose the reports.
Top Republicans on five committees sent letters to a dozen individual agencies Wednesday, including the
Department of Labor
, the
Small Business Administration
, the
Department of Energy
, and the
Department of Agriculture
, after an earlier letter to the Biden administration went unanswered. President Joe Biden signed an
executive order
in March 2021 directing agencies to produce plans to increase voter turnout but has not made public the reports that were due in September of last year.
WHAT IS BIDEN HIDING IN HIS EXECUTIVE ORDER ON ELECTIONS?
“It’s a huge issue of transparency,” Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), the ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “And clearly, the Biden administration’s failure to even respond to our first request shows that they’re trying to hide something.”
The letters tell each agency that lawmakers are “concerned that this Executive Order goes beyond the power of the President and the statutory authority given to federal agencies.”
While affirming that all eligible citizens should vote and should be encouraged to vote, Davis and his colleagues are scrutinizing how voting initiatives will distract from the agencies’ missions.
“It’s also taking resources away from some other tasks that those federal agencies need to address at a time where we have historic high inflation, we have a border crisis that’s killing our communities when it comes to the drug trade, and we have a violent crime crisis that’s out of control in urban areas in America,” Davis said. “I think these agencies should be doing something more than promoting access to voting when we have historic voter turnout.”
The Biden administration’s refusal to be transparent about the plans has caused some to believe the president is focusing voter registration efforts on population segments that would benefit his electoral prospects.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“A president has every right to sway potential voters on the campaign trail. He has no right to influence them using the force of the federal government,” Tarren Bragdon and Stewart Whitson, leaders of the Foundation for Government Accountability,
wrote
in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Davis isn’t the first to try to uncover the plans, as Rep. Tedd Budd (R-NC)
led
an effort of 36 House Republicans in February that also went unanswered. Freedom of Information Act requests from the FGA have been similarly ignored thus far.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the White House for comment.
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