Democrats are using a little-known election strategy—and taxpayer dollars—to turn out likely Democrat votes this November.
The strategy hinges on a key demographic with which Democrats have traditionally performed well: young, college-aged voters.
A person casts their vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary at a polling station in West Columbia, S.C., on Feb. 3, 2024. ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty Images
Vice President Kamala Harris has openly acknowledged that the government, through get-out-the-vote initiatives, is paying college students to register voters.
“We have been doing work to promote voter participation for students. And, for example we … now allow students to get paid through Federal Work Study to register people and to be nonpartisan poll workers,” Harris said on Feb. 27.
Paying students to canvass is the latest component of an initiative originated under former President Barack Obama to increase student voting.
Initially, this was carried out in conjunction with private nonprofit organizations such as Civic Nation. But under the Biden administration, the student get-out-the-vote campaign is now being run with federal funds, spearheaded by the Department of Education.
The initiative, according to a lawsuit brought by the nonprofit Wisconsin Voter Alliance (WVA), amounts to a partisan campus voter drive for left-wing candidates.
“It’s extremely effective,” WVA President Ron Heuer told The Epoch Times. “They’re using our facilities, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, and employees of our universities to run this whole scheme, and presidents of universities across the nation have all signed on to this thing.”
Heuer said student voting data gathered by WVA shows exceedingly high rates of student registration relative to other groups and an overwhelming share of votes for Democrat candidates.
“There are some really strange things going on on campuses, with regard to left-leaning 501(c)(3) organizations taking control of the entire process of voter registration and get-out-the-vote,” Heuer said.
Meanwhile, analysts have raised red flags about the personal information that is being collected on more than 50 million college students. Critics allege that the data may be accessible to partisan groups.
The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), America’s largest student data aggregator, collects student information from 3,550 colleges and universities, and 22,000 high schools. Partnering with Tufts, the NSC created the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE), to which schools submit students’ voting information.
“Institutions that choose to participate in NSLVE sign an authorization form that permits the Clearinghouse to provide a voter organization with student names, addresses, and dates of birth to match with that organization’s voter registration data,” the NSC told The Epoch Times.
“The matched dataset is then sent to the Clearinghouse, and the organization destroys the data it received from the Clearinghouse.”
The contracts schools sign with the NSLVE permit student data to be shared with a “third-party” organization. Third-party organizations that have partnered with NSLVE have included data aggregators Catalist and L2 Political.
Catalist, funded by progressive billionaire George Soros, states that it was established for the purpose of “providing our data only to Democrats and progressives.”
But both the NSC and Tufts said they no longer work with Catalist and do not share data with aggregators. Tufts added that neither it nor NSLVE receive students’ personal data “such as names or other information that would enable us to identify individual students.”
—Kevin Stocklin and Samantha Flom
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks at the Capitol in Washington on March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
LITTLE REPUBLICAN APPETITE TO TAKE JOHNSON’S GAVEL
Just before members of Congress left Washington for an ongoing two-week recess, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) threw a wrench in the already-frenzied state of affairs on Capitol Hill by filing a motion to oust Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as speaker. This was in response to the last-minute $1.2 trillion bill Johnson put forth to fund most of the government and therefore avoid a partial government shutdown.
However, the motion is not privileged and therefore will not have to be brought onto the House floor.
Greene said that the motion to vacate is just a “pink slip” and is not meant to throw the House into the same chaos it experienced in October, when Johnson’s predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) filed such a motion. It was the first time a speaker has been ousted through a motion to vacate.
“Committees will continue doing their work, investigations will continue. I support Republicans holding the majority next conference, but we need a Speaker of the House that knows how to negotiate, knows how to walk in the room, knows how to hold the line, and knows how to defend America first and the values and the policies that President Trump will bring,” said Greene.
Despite dissatisfaction among hardline conservatives with Johnson, there is little appetite to strip him of the gavel.
“If we vacate this speaker, we'll end up with a Democrat speaker,” said Gaetz.
“If we were to kick him out, you might as well just give the gavel to Hakeem,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), referring to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), who was one of the eight Republicans to join all Democrats in ousting McCarthy as speaker, said that he wouldn’t support a motion to vacate against Johnson at the present time.
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), who was also one of those eight Republicans, said he doesn’t want to see Johnson ousted and suggested there isn’t much discussion of the move within the party.
On Fox News on March 21, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who was a member of the group of eight Republicans, said, “I’m not going to go down that road right now.”
Nonetheless, Johnson will be working to avoid the motion to vacate from reaching the floor as he juggles numerous thorny issues, for example, providing assistance to Ukraine.
—Jackson Richman
BOOKMARKS
The Cook Political Report has downgraded Democrats’ odds in the Silver State of Nevada, The Epoch Times’ Joseph Lord reports. Citing growing indicators that Nevada’s Senate race could go either way, they downgraded Sen. Jacky Rosen’s (D-Nev.) reelection odds from “lean Democrat” to “toss-up.”
The federal judge who criticized former President Donald Trump on cable news has been hit with an ethics complaint, The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reports. The complaint comes after U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton likened Trump’s comments about a New York Supreme Court justice to a threat.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Trump campaign together raked in $65.6 million in March, The Epoch Times’ Austin Alonzo reports. The news follows a change in leadership at the RNC amid frustrations over lackluster fundraising.
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says President Joe Biden’s censorship of his political opponents makes him a “worse threat to democracy” than his predecessor, The Epoch Times’ Jeff Louderback reports. The ex-Democrat’s comments follow the Democratic National Committee’s announcement of an initiative to counter third-party and independent presidential candidates.
Chicago Police were called to an illegal immigrant shelter more than 250 times in the past year, The Epoch Times’ Samantha Flom reports. Violent crimes accounted for a significant portion of the incidents, including aggravated assault, domestic battery, child abduction, and child abuse.
Democrat senators will not join other members of their party in calling for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s retirement, NBC News reports. But they are voicing concerns that they might miss their chance to replace her with another left-leaning judge, raising concerns about a potential 7–2 conservative court.
