A federal agency, subordinate to the US Department of Justice, is working with left-wing NGOs to encourage voting by prisoners and former prisoners, under a direct order from President Joe Biden, with the aim of increasing the engagement of this public in the presidential elections November, in which the current president will possibly face Republican Donald Trump in a new clash.
According to an investigation by the news portal Daily Signalthe Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP), responsible for the custody and control of incarcerated individuals in the United States, has partnered with politicized groups such as the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union, Campaign Legal Center and the Washington Lawyers Committee to encourage voting inside the country's prisons.
FBOP spokesperson Emery Nelson, who is part of the Department of Justice, confirmed the agreement to the portal. “The agency meets quarterly with the D.C. Board of Elections, the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Campaign Legal Center, Disability Rights DC, the Sentencing Project and the Washington Lawyers Committee,” he said. .
“The League of Women Voters is helping the federal agency prepare a voting informational video that is expected to be completed by the end of February 2024,” Nelson said.
Additionally, the FBOP spokesperson reported that the agency has sent letters to all states that allow incarcerated individuals to vote and has partnered with other local nonprofit organizations. “BOP is partnering with Chicago Votes to bring voter education and registration to the Metropolitan Correctional Center Chicago – a federal prison located in Illinois – and in November 2023 reached agreements with the District of Columbia Board of Elections to offer a presentation to a Topeka, Kansas high school voting club on the voting rights of incarcerated individuals.”
The Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), a prison located in Los Angeles County, is also one of the Biden administration's focuses to encourage voting. California is one of the key states in elections in the United States.
This partnership with left-wing NGOs is based on an executive order from Biden himself, signed at the beginning of his presidential term, in 2021. The document was prepared with the aim of “promoting access to voting in the country”. One of the topics listed concerns “requesting and facilitating approved third-party and 'nonpartisan' organizations and State employees to provide voter registration services at agency facilities.”
O Daily Signal previously reported that another agency, the Indian Health Service (IHS), responsible for providing federal health services to American Indians and Alaska Natives, helped write the executive order at that time.
After the discovery of the agreement between the NGOs and the Democratic administration, the Whitson organization, a conservative government watchdog group, took legal action against the Department of Justice, seeking its strategic plan to comply with the federal order. Republican Party members in the House and Senate, as well as other government watchdog groups, also unsuccessfully pressed for the Biden administration to disclose which organizations it was working with.
The Foundation for Government Accountability was the first group to expose that activities that began after the measure was authorized in 2021 included officials from the White House Domestic Policy Council and numerous left-leaning organizations, including some of the Bureau of Prisons' partners. .
“The best hope of stopping this is for good, principled federal officials who witness an armed government effort to turn out votes for the left to use whistleblower protections to report what they saw,” the Whitson organization said.
For the legal director of the Foundation for Government Accountability, Stewart Whitson, what is most concerning about this situation is that “most of the groups involved have a history of being allied with the policies of only one of the two political parties, and this is clearly an effort party to keep the current president in power”, he declared.
The agreement between Biden administration agencies and outside political groups is “undemocratic,” said Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, a conservative-leaning watchdog that tracks the activity of nonprofits.
“How undemocratic of the White House to get involved in election administration with groups like the ACLU and the League of Women Voters – politicized nonprofits that fight for agendas that the majority of Americans in this democracy do not support,” Walter told The Daily Signal. “If a Republican White House attempted such a stunt with, say, Charles Koch's Believe in People, which is also a nonprofit organization, the outrage from the media and Congress would rightly be deafening,” he claimed.
Attempts to overturn Biden's executive order have been going on for longer. In December, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation through the Administration Committee that would revoke the president's order.
The previous month, Senate Republicans, led by Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, wrote to Biden saying the measure could violate a federal law that prohibits agencies from spending money that is not authorized by Congress. “Federal agencies should focus on their defined missions in a nonpartisan manner, not using taxpayer funds for voter mobilization efforts with potentially partisan impacts,” Hagerty said in the letter, signed by 22 other Senate Republicans.
Although convicted felons are temporarily barred from voting in most states, certain incarcerated individuals – such as someone awaiting trial – are eligible to participate in the electoral process.
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