‘Unlawful and outrageous abuse of taxpayer funds,’ former FEC member says
As the 2024 election approaches, a “social justice” organization in Washington State is making efforts to increase voter engagement by leveraging the federal work-study program.
The University of Washington is advertising the work-study position for a voter engagement intern with El Centro de la Raza. Translated as the Center for People of All Races, the Seattle organization describes its work as “social justice.”
The job, and others like it, have conservatives concerned about the Biden-Harris administration using the taxpayer-funded program to help Democrats in the November election.
For the University of Washington job, students can apply to help with El Centro de la Raza’s “voter engagement campaign for King County,” concentrating their efforts on young people and the Latino community.
To achieve the center’s “goal of increasing voter participation,” the student will perform various duties that range from creating social media content to assisting “with non-partisan candidate forums” to managing “voter registration activities,” according to the job description.
In the job listing, the center says its mission involves building what Martin Luther King Jr. called the “Beloved Community” by “unifying all racial and economic sectors,” supporting human rights, and bringing “critical consciousness, justice, dignity, and equity to all peoples of the world.”
El Centro de la Raza is “a gathering place for Seattle’s otherwise dispersed,” according to its website. And “undoing systemic racism and ending poverty are at the core” of its mission.
The position pays $19.97 to $21.97 dollars an hour for up to 19 hours per week.
University spokesperson Victor Balta told The College Fix in a recent email that the position “is open for students with work study eligibility to apply.”
Balta confirmed that El Centro de la Raza is approved “as a Community Service employer on the Federal Work Study Program,” and the job “was approved based on the non-partisan work around voter registration.”
He also said the organization has been “a long-time off campus work-study employer, and is approved to participate in work study programs at the state level.”
Balta said the university “will not have direct oversight of the position.” However, when the position is filled, the university will remind “the employer…that [the] position and [its] duties/responsibilities must be non-partisan,” he told The Fix.
The Fix also contacted El Centro de la Raza twice by email, but did not receive a response. Questions pertained to the work-study job, El Centro de la Raza’s goals for the position, and the Department of Education’s expectations for voter engagement work.
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U.S. Department of Education spokesperson Alberto Betancourt told The Fix in an email about the department’s expectations for work-study jobs.
Betancourt said the department “allows federal work study funds to be used for voter registration activities when students are employed directly by the postsecondary institution.”
Additionally, it “allows federal work study funds to be used for employment by a Federal, State, local or Tribal public agency for civic engagement work that is not performed to benefit a particular interest or group,” he said.
Vice President Kamala Harris announced these guidelines in February, saying students can get “paid through federal work-study to register people [to vote] and to be nonpartisan poll workers.”
This will “engage our young leaders in this process and activate them in terms of their ability to strengthen our communities,” Harris said in a statement at the time.
‘Outrageous abuse of taxpayer funds’
However, Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, called the voter registration jobs an “abuse of federal resources” in an email to The College Fix.
“These organizations … are political allies of the Biden-Harris administration and the Democrat Party,” von Spakovsky said in a statement Friday to The Fix. He now serves as a senior legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
“It is an unlawful and outrageous abuse of taxpayer funds for the federal government to be paying college interns to engage in what amounts to partisan get-out-the-vote work for the Democrat Party,” he said.
Von Spakovsky said this is the first time a presidential administration has allowed taxpayer funds to be used for such things.
“Unfortunately, given the politicization of the U.S. Justice Department by Merrick Garland as a weapon to be used against the political opponents of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the law enforcement agency of the U.S. government will not take action [to] stop this illegal misbehavior,” he told The Fix.
Republicans in Congress also have criticized the Biden administration’s change.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, who chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee, criticized Vice President Harris for “bill[ing] this scheme as ‘non-partisan’ and one that will ‘promote voter participation for students.’ Nobody is buying that pitch.”
Biden and Harris are converting the program into a “vote-buying sweepstakes,” the North Carolina Republican said in a March statement.
Foxx and other House Republicans also expressed concern about the work-study program changes in a March letter to Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
This decision appeared “partisan and political,” they wrote. The lawmakers also noted how certain organizations, like the Alliance for Justice, can “operate under the tax code as ‘nonpartisan’ groups” while holding left-leaning bias.
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