President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is applauding the Trump administration for rescinding a 2021 executive order directing federal agencies to offer voter registration materials when they interact with citizens. LaRose was one of a handful of Republican state officials to sue the Biden administration over the policy last year.
Voting rights advocates meanwhile land somewhere between frustrated and nonplussed. They contend many people interact with federal agencies, and the program simply makes reliable information about voting and voter registration readily available. How could that, they ask, amount to “weaponizing” the federal government?
The lawsuit and the rescission
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The lawsuit LaRose joined was filed by the America First Policy Institute — a kind of second Trump administration in waiting set up by several figures from his first administration. The complaint claimed that by making information readily available, the order was “a blatant and unlawful effort to use taxpayer money to help elect Democratic candidates, including President Biden.”
After all, the complaint argued, people who speak another language, work for the federal government, receive housing or food benefits, as well as students, native Americans, people with disabilities, or those who are incarcerated all tend to vote for Democrats. By extension, any effort to offer those people assistance must necessarily be a partisan voter turnout effort.
Get out the vote activities, they argued, “unavoidably increase net turnout of whatever party has majority support in the area” and “cannot be conducted in a nonpartisan fashion.”
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose talks to reporters. (Photo by Susan Tebben, OCJ.)
Although Biden issued his executive order in 2021, LaRose and AFPI didn’t file their suit challenging it until last July, on the eve of the 2024 election. The parties quietly put the case on hold after Trump won the race.
Following Trump’s executive action rescinding Biden’s policy, LaRose crowed that “the Biden Administration’s attempt to use federal resources for partisan election activities threatened to undermine the integrity and neutrality of our electoral processes. I was proud to fight against this federal overreach and commend President Trump’s decisive action to affirm his administration’s commitment to transparent and fair elections.”
Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who heads up AFPI’s election integrity work, praised Trump’s “quick action to ensure that federal government agencies are no longer weaponized when it comes to voter registration.”
“We applaud him for prioritizing this issue on Day 1 and encourage his new administration to investigate any actions taken by federal agencies under EO 14019,” he added. “Finally, Americans can trust that the federal government is not providing a partisan advantage to one side or the other in voter registration.”
“It’s so kosher”
Lisa Danetz is an attorney who works as an advisor to the Brennan Center. In June of last year, she testified before Congress in a hearing questioning the Small Business Administration’s efforts in response to Biden’s executive order.
She explained to lawmakers that federal agencies have helped out with voter registration going back to the 1950s when the Department of Defense set up a program for assisting voters overseas. More recently, the federal government directed state motor vehicle licensing agencies to offer voter registration forms to eligible citizens; the same law directs military recruitment offices, which are federal entities, to serve as voter registration agencies as well.
Danetz argued the executive continues that effort.
“Everybody interacts with the federal government in one way or another,” she said. “So it’s an attempt to reach the full populace right and provide access to voter registration application opportunities.”
Danetz cautioned that she’s unable to say how significantly Trump’s decision will impact voter registration.
“What I would say is I find it sad,” she said. “In that, this is a way to get voter registration opportunities and reliable voting information to people from all backgrounds and across the political spectrum, and to withdraw and withhold those opportunities, I mean to me as an American citizen, that’s upsetting.”
Danetz heard arguments like the ones laid out in the lawsuit when she testified before Congress and seemed a bit baffled that providing assistance would be viewed as partisan. She explained the order imposes the same kind of requirements that information remain nonpartisan that governs voter registration at the BMV.
“It’s so kosher,” she said.
Kayla Griffin-Green who heads up the Ohio chapter of All Voting is Local, is a disheartened by the move. She noted in addition to the BMV, several other state agencies including Job and Family Services provide voting information to people seeking assistance. Griffin-Green argued there should be more of a ‘no wrong door’ approach to voting whether an agency is state-run or federal.
“I think that we should get away from thinking about like, whose job it is,” she said. “We should want an engaged voting population. We should want everybody to engage in democracy, and what this shows us is that we are looking for ways to close doors on people.”
She called it “absurd” and “an erosion of our democratic system” to assume that providing assistance through federal agencies is by its nature a partisan exercise.
Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.
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