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Swing States Are Using Taxpayer Money to Turn Out Democrat-Leaning Young Voters


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | MAY 01, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/01/swing-states-are-using-taxpayer-money-to-turn-out-democrat-leaning-young-voters/

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Democrat election officials in Arizona and Nevada are using taxpayer resources to register and turn out Democrat-favorable young voters ahead of the 2024 election.

On Monday, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, announced that his office is partnering with the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge to launch the “Arizona Campus Voting Challenge.” According to an office press release, this allegedly “nonpartisan initiative” is designed to increase voter engagement among students attending accredited universities throughout the state.

Young voters (18-29) broke for Democrat House candidates over Republican ones by a nearly 2-to-1 margin during the 2022 midterms, according to estimates by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

Participation in the Arizona Campus Voting Challenge is free and allows participating colleges to become “eligible for awards based on voter turnout and registration rates on their campuses for the November 5, 2024 election.” Federal law makes it illegal to “make[] or offer[] to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote.”

Students who join will also be “provided guidance and tools to create an action plan for increasing student engagement on their campus,” according to Fontes’ office.

“By signing up for the Arizona Campus Voting Challenge, all accredited, degree-granting higher education institutions across the state can improve, measure, and celebrate efforts to institutionalize nonpartisan civic learning, political engagement and informed voter participation,” the presser reads. “Institutions that sign up for the Arizona Campus Voting Challenge will also be automatic participants in the nationwide ALL IN where awards are issued for highest voter turnout, most improved voter turnout, and highest rate of voter registration. As well as state-specific awards for meeting objectives mapped out in an institution’s nonpartisan democratic engagement action plan.”

Despite being marketed as “nonpartisan,” the initiative appears to be anything but. As I previously wrote in these pages, ALL IN is an enterprise of Civic Nation, a left-wing nonprofit headed by Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. The initiative has previously produced Democrat talking points, such as the baseless claim that “strict voter ID requirements” are “barriers” to voting.

ALL IN’s leadership team is also comprised of Democrats. Founding advisory board member Alicia Kolar Prevost, for example, previously served in the Clinton administration and worked at the Democratic National Committee.

Not Democrats’ First Rodeo

Fontes is hardly the only left-wing election official using his office to turn out a demographic favorable to Democrats.

Earlier this year, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, also a Democrat, announced his office would be accepting applications to join his “Youth Advisory Task Force” to engage young voters ahead of the 2024 election. According to an office press release, the task force’s priorities include “identifying and proposing programs that support participatory democracy and solutions to any problem concerning the level of participatory democracy of young voters,” and “supporting projects … that encourage and advance participatory democracy of young voters.”

Task force members were appointed by Aguilar earlier this month and include “high school and college students, as well as non-students, between the ages of 17 and 24.” There are roughly 118,000 students enrolled in Nevada colleges, according to Univstats.

Michigan Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson launched a similar task force in October.

Democrats Use Taxpayer Dollars to Target Young Voters

At the same time Democrat officials like Fontes and Aguilar target young voters with taxpayer dollars in their respective states, President Joe Biden is weaponizing the federal government to take these efforts nationwide.

Signed in March 2021, Executive Order 14019 directed hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration by using taxpayer funds to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. Agencies were instructed to collaborate with so-called “nonpartisan third-party organizations” that have been “approved” by the White House to provide “voter registration services on agency premises.” Of course, many of these “nonpartisan” groups have been identified as extremely left-wing, such as the ACLU and Demos.

As part of its compliance with the “Bidenbucks” order, the Department of Education issued a memo in February announcing that Federal Work-Study funds — which are used to provide part-time campus jobs to help students with tuition costs — may be used to employ students by government agencies for work such as “supporting broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration, providing voter assistance at a polling place or through a voter hotline, or serving as a poll worker.” The agency also released a “toolkit” that included guidelines for universities on how to increase voter registration and turnout on their campuses.

A Nationwide Strategy

Through the use of these taxpayer-funded GOTV operations and voter registration drives conducted by left-wing nonprofits such as the Voter Participation Center, Democrats are hoping young voters can make the difference for Biden in the battleground states needed to win the presidency this November.

In the 2020 election, for example, Biden won Arizona by less than 11,000 votes, or 0.4 percent. The Grand Canyon State also experienced close elections in the 2022 midterms, in which Democrat Kris Mayes defeated Republican Abe Hamadeh in the attorney general’s race by just 280 votes.

Given these slim margins and college students’ history of (mostly) backing Democrats, it’s no surprise Biden and Co. have made them a major focus of 2024 GOTV operations. With many students living near or on university grounds, campuses make for the perfect Democrat Party registration hubs and offer the party an opportunity to expand their chances of electoral success.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Two States Now Have Universal School Choice — And Yours Could Be Next


BY: KERI INGRAHAM | JANUARY 27, 2023

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/two-states-now-have-universal-school-choice-and-yours-could-be-next-2659317975.html/

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signing a document
On Tuesday, Iowa became the second state in the country to pass universal school choice. Several red states are looking to follow suit.

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On Tuesday, Iowa became the second state in the country to pass universal school choice, directly providing families with funds to support their children’s education. Arizona was the trendsetter for this new wave of educational freedom after Gov. Doug Ducey signed universal school choice into law on July 7, 2022. 

Now the race is on to advance educational freedom, with several red states looking to follow suit. The significance of these developments can hardly be overstated. What was once a pipe dream for many education reformers — the enabling of school choice at scale during their lifetimes — is now becoming a reality.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, true to her word, wasted no time in the 2023 legislative session by introducing the Students First Act in her Condition of the State address on Jan. 10. Within two weeks, the bill was signed into law. It took less than 24 hours for debate in the House and Senate, followed by Reynolds’ signing. The education savings account (ESA) program will provide parents with approximately $7,600 annually to allocate toward approved educational avenues. Most families are eligible in years one and two, and the benefit will be extended to all families statewide in year three.

Of course, powers beholden to leftist teachers unions should not be expected to go down without a fight. Even in pioneering state Arizona, new Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs seeks to undo its universal school voucher expansion law in her 2023 budget proposal. With Republicans controlling both state legislative bodies, her proposal will likely go down with the same fate as her massively failed veto referendum that sought to stop the law from taking effect while she was secretary of state last fall. For a politician, Hobbs is remarkably insensitive to the views of Arizona voters, 67 percent of whom support the state’s ESA program (the number jumps to 77 percent of Arizona parents of school-aged children).

States with a Republican governor and GOP majorities in both their House and Senate, on the other hand, are leading the charge across the United States to empower parents with options. The goal is universal school choice — through ESAs — to provide flexibility for families to select their desired educational avenue. Funds can be spent on school tuition, homeschool expenses, online learning, tutoring, special needs therapy, learning materials, and other education-related expenses.

ESA programs not only afford parents options outside of government-run, union-controlled public schools, but they save the state money because typically only a portion of the student state funding is provided. For example, in Arizona, instead of upwards of $12,000 spent per student within the public system, the ESA provided to families is only $7,000.

As the race to pass universal school choice picks up speed, several states could be heading to the home stretch in the coming weeks and months.

  • Utah is positioned extremely well to join the universal school choice ranks as the House and
    Senate have both passed the “Utah Fits All Act” as of January 26. If signed into law by Gov.
    Spencer Cox, families would have access to roughly $8,000 each year for educational expenses.
  • Florida is historically a national leader in school choice, with almost half its students learning in an option outside of their assigned traditional public school. Current legislation is calling for
    universal school choice. With Republican lawmakers holding supermajorities in both the House
    and Senate, and Gov. Ron DeSantis at the helm, it’s only a matter of time.
  • Oklahoma is a contender in the educational freedom race. The Education Freedom Act is currently in the Senate, which has a 40-8 Republican supermajority. The House has an 81-20 supermajority. Once the bill hits educational freedom champion Gov. Kevin Stitt’s desk, it will be signed into law. It will grant all families statewide access to an ESA based on the state’s per-pupil education expense. State Superintendent Ryan Walters is a fierce supporter of empowering Oklahoma families with educational freedom to select the schools that will best serve their children.
  • Texas, traditionally lagging behind other red states on school choice, is not to be counted out this session in advancing ESAs. In May 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott urged lawmakers to empower parents through state funding following students. As the months passed, the groundwork was laid, including debunking the notion that school choice does not benefit rural areas or that it hurts rural school districts.
  • West Virginia was the national leader prior to Arizona passing universal school choice in 2022. In West Virginia, roughly 93 percent of students have access to the Hope Scholarship to date. There is the possibility to expand it to 100 percent of the state’s children within the next three years. Despite the state’s families having negligible educational freedom options until 2019, West Virginia is now among the leaders.
  • Indiana has efforts underway to expand the state’s existing ESA program to all students statewide while also increasing the grant amount from 90 percent of the per-student state funding to 100 percent. That would translate to an average of $7,500 allocated per student for educational expenses of the parents’ choosing.
  • Arkansas shouldn’t be overlooked this session. Newly elected Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has stated her support for plans to “empower parents with more choices … so no child is ever trapped in a failing school.”

The tide is turning, and the implications are tremendous. No longer will families be at the mercy of government-run, union-controlled traditional public schools. Parents in an increasing number of states will be empowered as decision-makers in their children’s education.

The question is: Which state will be next to achieve universal educational freedom?

Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a Fellow at Discovery Institute, Director of the American Center for Transforming Education, and a Visiting Fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.

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