Hansi Lo Wang for NPR:
In these final months before this fall’s election, Republican officials are ramping up attacks on a three-year-old executive order President Biden issued to try to get more eligible voters signed up to cast ballots.
The order calls for federal agencies to promote voter registration and participation in ways that are “consistent with applicable law.” Many election experts see the effort as a worthwhile attempt to take advantage of the regular interactions eligible voters have with the government and address long-standing barriers to the ballot, including those facing people of color, those with disabilities, those in federal custody and those serving overseas in the U.S. military.
“It is our duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so,” the 2021 order says.
But now, as the Democratic president faces reelection, his order has sparked growing pushback from the right, most recently congressional subpoenas to agency directors from the GOP-controlled House Administration Committee and an attempt by a group of Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania to get the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a dismissed lawsuit over the order.
Backed with no substantial evidence, GOP lawmakers and state election officials, along with right-wing activists, have launched a barrage of claims that the Biden administration is using this order to overstep the federal government’s role in elections, garner more Democratic voters and register non-U.S. citizens, who cannot legally vote in federal elections.
“This Executive Order is another attempt by the Biden Administration to tilt the scales ahead of 2024,” Republican Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chair of the House Administration Committee, said this month in a press release referencing “Bidenbucks,” what has become shorthand for unsubstantiated allegations that the administration is misusing federal tax dollars to benefit Biden’s reelection campaign.
What the order has actually done, however, has not fully satisfied its supporters.
A few federal agencies have started new partnerships with states to help with voter registration, and others have released guides, mailers and updated websites. But it’s unclear how many new voter registration applications the order has yielded so far.