by John Solomon and Natalia Mittelstadt at Just the News
Congressional investigators have obtained evidence that the Biden administration has launched a sprawling effort to use federally funded job training and food stamp programs to register new voters in Democrat-skewing demographic groups such as young adults and Native Americans, fueling concerns the federal government is placing a partisan thumb on the scales in the midterm elections.
Part of the plan, spurred by a 2021 executive order by President Joe Biden, is captured in an eight-page memo that the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration sent out in March to state and local officials responsible for providing training to workers in need of jobs.
The memo explicitly authorizes states to use the American Job Center Network, a federally-funded job training program with more than 2,000 outlets nationwide, to facilitate voter registration among workers seeking its help, specifically targeting Native American, youth and farm workers.
“States may choose to designate American Job Centers (AJCs), a nationwide network of almost 2,400 locally-operated centers providing job training and employment services, as voter registration agencies,” the memo stated. “Additionally, some DOL-funded programs operated in and out of AJCs can also assist individual participants in registering to vote.”
The memo readily acknowledges the Labor Department is using for voter registration purposes programs created by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act that were “designed to help job seekers access employment, education, training, and support services to succeed in the labor market and to match employers with skilled workers.”
The memo also explicitly authorizes federally funded job training centers to “develop a system for collecting and transporting voter registration forms,” raising concerns among some about chain of custody for sensitive voter information.
“Voter registration staff are responsible for protecting voter registration forms; these forms include personal information and should be stored in a safe, secure location until the forms are transferred to election officials to avoid compromising that information,” the memo noted.
Labor officials say they believe the voter outreach through job training programs is permitted by the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and that the goal is purely to “share nonpartisan information and resources.”
“Please note: voter registration activities must not influence an applicant’s political preference or party registration, display any political preference or party allegiance, make any statement or take any action to discourage the applicant from registering to vote, nor make any statement or take any action to lead the applicant to believe that a decision to register or not to register has any bearing on the availability of services or benefits,” the memo stated.
But Republicans in Congress,
Continue Reading