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 sayThe 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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