What is the Biden administration hiding? With the 2022 midterm elections approaching fast, the White House has ordered every federal agency to register and mobilize voters — and it’s refusing to tell people whom it’s targeting or what it’s saying. On Wednesday, June 15, Republicans on five House committees sent letters to 12 federal agencies demanding answers. For the sake of the public’s faith in elections, Republicans will ensure this unprecedented use of federal power receives the highest level of scrutiny.
The Biden administration has been pursuing this radical election agenda since March of last year. That’s when the president signed an executive order forcing the massive federal bureaucracy to focus on voter registration and mobilization. This has never happened in American history, for good reason.
Federal agencies are filled with political appointees. They want to see their party and their president stay in power, not least because their own jobs depend on it. So they have every reason to focus on voters who are most likely to vote a certain way. And since they have the full force and taxpayer funding of the federal government behind them, they can influence voters more consistently and effectively than any political campaign. The public has every right to ask whether the Biden administration is mobilizing voters who are most likely to vote for liberal candidates.
The fact that the Biden administration launched this government-funded, campaign-style effort is concerning enough. But what makes it terrifying is the total lack of transparency ever since. Every federal agency has submitted its voting plan to the White House. They are also likely implementing them — to the point of communicating with potential voters and sending federal officials into urban and rural areas alike. But not a single plan has been publicly released.
In fact, the White House has fought to keep people in the dark. The Foundation for Government Accountability has submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to federal agencies, yet not a single one has responded. It’s a clear violation of federal law and the subject of a new lawsuit in federal courts.
That’s why Republicans in Congress are demanding answers. The committee letters to the 12 federal agencies build on the work of the House Administration Committee’s “Faith in Elections Project,” which seeks to ensure that Americans can trust in election processes and outcomes. These agencies need to tell Congress — which has the power of the purse strings, as well as oversight — exactly what they’re doing.
For instance, what is the Department of Education saying to America’s students? It could be registering and mobilizing millions of high school and college students while pressuring them to vote for liberal candidates.
What is the Department of Agriculture doing? It oversees food stamps, which have seen a 25% funding boost under the Biden administration. People need to know what the department is saying to food stamp recipients — and whether it’s trying to influence their votes by tying future eligibility approval to voting a certain way.
The Department of Health and Human Services should answer a similar question. It oversees Medicaid, which has seen surging enrollment under the Biden administration. Are political appointees targeting recipients as part of these get-out-the-vote efforts?
And then there’s the Social Security Administration. It could conceivably tip the political scales every time someone changes their name, becomes a citizen, or otherwise interacts with the agency. If anything even close to that is happening, we need to know about it now.
The Biden administration needs to come clean immediately. Politicized federal agencies shouldn’t be registering or mobilizing voters in the first place — they should be focusing on their core missions. In any case, they should never hide what they’re doing from the public. If Republicans tried this stunt, the media would call it the end of democracy. The Biden administration should be held to the same standard.
House Republicans will fight to give the people the transparency they deserve. The integrity of the 2022 midterm elections and 2024 presidential election demands nothing less.
Rodney Davis represents Illinois’s 13th Congressional District and is the ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, which has jurisdiction over federal elections. Tarren Bragdon is CEO of the Foundation for Government Accountability.
