A New York lawmaker has joined other Republicans taking fresh aim at a 3-year-old executive order from President Biden. U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney claims the order violates the law limiting federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity and requires federal offices to illegally collect ballots.
Experts on election law say that’s a false interpretation of Biden’s order which was designed to promote information about voter registration.
Tenney, a Republican seeking re-election in a district that reaches from the North Country into Western New York, claimed on Facebook that Biden's executive order "requires our taxpayer-funded federal agencies to violate the Hatch Act and engage in illegal vote harvesting."
The Hatch Act limits partisan political activity by federal employees and by state and local employees who deliver federally funded programs during work hours and bans them from using government offices and resources.
We wondered how this order could require federal employees to engage in partisan political activity and illegally harvest votes.
"Ballot harvesting" or "vote harvesting" is a term often used by people in a pejorative way to refer to collecting completed absentee ballots and submitting them. Some voting rights experts see the term "ballot harvesting" as pejorative and prefer the term "ballot collection." Many states allow at least certain individuals to collect some ballots on behalf of others.
Biden signed Executive Order 14019 on March 7, 2021. It builds on a 1993 law, the National Voter Registration Act, which aimed to expand opportunities for eligible voters to register at places such as military recruiting offices, state motor vehicle departments and federal agencies.
The National Voter Registration Act specifies that voter registration activities must be nonpartisan and that the "person providing assistance at a voter registration agency cannot attempt to influence an applicant’s political preference or party registration" or make an applicant believe that public benefits or services are dependent on decisions related to their registration, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Biden’s order states that "the head of each agency shall evaluate ways in which the agency can, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, promote voter registration and voter participation." These activities include updating websites and other public-facing materials with information on how to register to vote, how to request a vote-by-mail ballot, and how to cast a ballot in upcoming elections, and pointing visitors to their own states’ election information.
A state can request that federal agencies be designated voter registration agencies, under the order, and states must approve of any such designation. Military recruitment offices are already voter registration agencies under the National Voter Registration Act.