M.D. Kittle writes for the Federalist about states’ approach to Biden administration election interference.
Several Republican-led states have joined forces to try to stop the Biden administration’s taxpayer-funded get-out-the-vote machine to elect Democrats.
But with a little more than three weeks before early voting begins and a contentious ballot collection season gets under way, much of the damage from “Bidenbucks” may already be done.
On Tuesday, attorneys general from nine states — Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota — filed a federal lawsuit asking a U.S. district court in Wichita, Kansas, to shut down an executive order that is using federal agencies to register and mobilize left-leaning voters, with the assistance of White House-approved leftist organizations. Among the charges, the complaint alleges the Biden administration has usurped the appropriating power of Congress, which did not grant the executive branch authority to fund the unprecedented GOTV initiative.
“We’re not going to stand by and let the federal government get turned into a giant voter turnout machine for Democrats. We’re going to make sure you follow the law,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen told me in an interview this week. “You’ve got an executive branch that is far exceeding the authority that has been given to them. This is something that’s never been done before at the federal level.”
That’s because, as the AGs argue in the federal lawsuit, the executive branch cannot “take money Congress allocated and reuse it for improper purposes.” And they certainly cannot do so without following the laws that establish procedures laid out by Congress. Biden and crew also can’t encroach on the state’s sovereign rights over the administration of elections, including registering voters.
“President Biden has sought to convert the federal bureaucracy into a voter registration organization and to turn every interaction between a federal bureaucrat and a member of the public into a voter registration pitch,” the lawsuit asserts. “That exceeds any authority executive entities have under federal law, violates the Constitution, threatens States’ attempt to regulate voter registration, and thus ultimately undermines the voter registration systems set up by the States.”
