Trump just unrigged American elections

OPINION:

American elections are no longer rigged by the federal government.

President Trump made sure of it in one of the most important executive orders he signed on Day 1 of his administration. He revoked a Biden executive order that fundamentally corrupted the federal government, turning it into a voter registration and mobilization machine. What President Biden did was a gross abuse of power — a transparent attempt to help Democrats win in 2024 and beyond. Thankfully, it didn’t work, and now Mr. Trump has ended this obvious injustice.

It’s almost impossible to overstate how unprecedented, undemocratic and un-American Mr. Biden’s election rigging was. The now-former president put his plan into action in 2021 when he mandated that every federal agency “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote” and “participate” in “the electoral process.”

This is the opposite of the federal government’s job. Federal agencies and public servants are supposed to fulfill very specific and limited missions. They are not supposed to help a partisan president turn out voters. That’s what dictators do — they use massive government power to mobilize their supporters.

Yet that’s exactly what the Biden administration did. Through freedom of information requests, my organization obtained documents showing that the White House partnered with liberal organizations that had put together a blueprint for politicizing the entire federal government. Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, and Demos told Biden administration agencies how to set up voter “infrastructure in jails and prisons,” how to make voter registration “mandatory at naturalization ceremonies,” how to turn “all agencies that provide public assistance” into get-out-the-vote machines, and more.

Which is exactly what happened. Based on Mr. Biden’s orders, the Department of Health and Human Services sent voter registration information to every enrollee in Healthcare.gov — more than 20 million people. The Social Security Administration pushed voter registration in all 1,200-plus offices nationwide. The Department of the Interior did the same at visitor centers and entrances for national parks and wildlife refuges, as well as other federal public lands that receive more than 500 million visits a year.

The list goes on. The federal work-study program paid college students to register voters while funding what the Department of Education called “get-out-the-vote activities.” The department also launched a “tool kit” to help college students vote and developed “strategies” for high schools to remind millions of students about their responsibility to vote. The Department of Agriculture pushed states to include voter registration information, including a “quick guide to voting,” in child nutrition programs. And the Department of Housing and Urban Development worked with more than 3,000 public housing authorities to register voters.

The list goes on — but even now, the full extent of federal actions isn’t known. My organization sued the Biden administration in 2022 after it refused to disclose all the details of its nationwide efforts to influence elections, but it hid behind claims of executive privilege. Now that Mr. Biden is gone, we hope Mr. Trump will show exactly what his predecessor did. It’s already clear that Mr. Biden turned the federal government into a key part of his own electoral strategy, but Americans still deserve to know just how far his scheming went.

Yet, given what we already know, it may be a minor miracle that Democrats lost in November. Americans were so fed up with the Biden administration’s failures that the president’s election rigging still failed. Now, the federal government can get back to doing its actual job. Health and Human Services can work on fixing health care. The Social Security Administration can focus on supporting seniors. Our national parks can welcome people to enjoy their beauty and nothing else.

That’s what Washington should have done over the past four years. It should never have become a tool for a president and a party who wanted votes. To his credit, Mr. Trump has ended this fundamental corruption of the federal government. And for the sake of our democracy, this blatant election rigging can never be allowed to happen again.

• Tarren Bragdon is CEO of the Foundation for Government Accountability.