Lawyers Say Biden’s College Vote-Collecting Scheme Likely Illegal
“effort by the Biden administration to coerce universities to pay college students with tax dollars to conduct voter registration efforts on campuses overwhelmingly stocked with Democrat-heavy voters”
I’m sure that this program has nothing to do with the fact that Democrats are worried about sagging support for Biden among young voters.
The College Fix reports:
Biden strong-arming colleges to pay students to collect votes likely illegal, lawyers say
The Biden administration has established a scheme forcing colleges and universities to pay students with taxpayer dollars to “get out the vote” in an unprecedented interpretation of the Higher Education Act that’s likely illegal, lawyers tell The College Fix.
The U.S. Department of Education announced in February that federal work-study funds, typically meant to assist college students in offsetting tuition costs by working a part-time campus job, could be used to pay students for “broad-based get-out-the-vote activities.”
The announcement came after an April 2022 memo from the department’s financial aid office warning universities their federal funding could be in jeopardy if they do not distribute voter registration forms, citing the Higher Education Act’s call to make a “good faith effort” to do so.
The one-two punch is being described by several observers as an obviously partisan — and likely illegal — effort by the Biden administration to coerce universities to pay college students with tax dollars to conduct voter registration efforts on campuses overwhelmingly stocked with Democrat-heavy voters.
Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told The College Fix that the cited section of the Higher Education Act “simply says that universities should do their best to distribute voter registration information to their own students.”
“It does not authorize the use of federal funds to pay students to engage in such activities, particularly to pay them to go outside of their college community to register voters who are not students. That is unprecedented,” he said.
Use of the funds in this manner could actually violate two separate acts, the Anti-Deficiency Act and the Hatch Act, he said. The Anti-Deficiency Act prohibits the use of federal funds for purposes beyond their specific lawful appropriation, and the Hatch Act limits the political activities of individuals paid by the federal government.
“Moreover, if you look closely at Section 487(a)(23) [of the Higher Education Act], which the administration is citing, it says very specifically that this section does NOT apply in any state that either has same day voter registration or does not require voter registration,” Spakovsky said.
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Comments
of course its illegal
and whats going to be done??
zilch!!!
There’s nothing “of course” about it. It may be illegal, but it’s not obviously so. This will have to be litigated.
Don’t you mean that it will have to be litigated even if it is obviously illegal?
No, I mean it will have to be litigated to find out whether it’s legal. If there’s a chance that it isn’t, then it should be fought, because legal or not it’s bad policy.
of course many of these students (native or foreign-born) are, in all likelihood, already registered in their home state
“Anybody want to vote twice?”
First of all, many are not. Second, even those who are, are 100% entitled to reregister where they are now; it’s then up to them not to vote in both places. If they’re caught they can get in trouble, so it’s up to GOP activists to spot possible duplicate voters and alert the authorities. (Note that it’s almost impossible for them to find confirmed duplicates; all they can find is possibles, and alert the authorities to investigate further. That is one of the mistakes activists made in 2020, which discredited them. They trumpeted huge numbers of “confirmed illegal votes”, and then turned out to have no proof, and in many cases to have been completely wrong.)
So the Biden folks are trying to find creative ways to cheat in the election. It’s not like they haven’t done it before.
and NOTHING will happen to the ones responsible …
lots of fainting couches and pearl clenching and shouts of OH MY
but the go along to get along party
will do nothing …
The authorizing law says they can’t do that?
Silly wabbits. Every budget is a slush fund. Any questions?
No, it doesn’t say they can’t do that. At least it doesn’t say so clearly. It just doesn’t say they have to.