Shawn Fleetwood writes for the Federalist about a disturbing claim from Mississippi’s top election official.
The Department of Justice appears to be using taxpayer dollars to have jails and the U.S. Marshals Service encourage incarcerated felons and noncitizens to register to vote, according to Mississippi’s leading election official.
On March 6, Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding the DOJ’s compliance with Executive Order 14019, a directive signed by President Biden in March 2021 that ordered hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration by using U.S. taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. Each department was directed to draft “a strategic plan” explaining how it intended to fulfill Biden’s edict, and to collaborate with so-called “nonpartisan third-party organizations” that have been “approved” by the administration to supply “voter registration services on agency premises.”
The DOJ has regularly stonewalled requests for documents related to the order’s implementation, even going as far as to heavily redact any records ordered for release by a federal court.
In his letter, obtained by The Federalist after Fox News first reported it, Watson expressed concern that the DOJ’s efforts to comply with Biden’s order “have led to agencies under [Garland’s] charge attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons and to coopt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.”
Watson said the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) — which falls under the DOJ — is altering existing agreements with jails to comply with Biden’s directive, now requiring these facilities “to provide voter registration materials and facilitate voting by mail.” In December 2021, the USMS modified “936 contracts or intergovernmental agreements and the agency’s information technology,” mandating that USMS officials “notify prisoners upon their admission into USMS custody of their right to request voting access information from their designated facility.”
