CV NEWS FEED // Republican Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson penned a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland warning that a 2021 Biden executive order could lead to illegal immigrants and convicted felons voting in U.S. elections.
“[O]n March 7, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order No. 14019 which sought to turn the Department of Justice agencies from their historical missions of law enforcement to voter registration and get out the vote operations,” Watson wrote.
“These efforts are an intrusion into state matters and are a misuse of federal revenue and resources,” the Republican continued. “In addition, it appears that these efforts have led to agencies under your charge attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons and to co-opt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.”
FOX News reported that later in his letter to Garland, “Watson outlines concerns that the executive order ‘forces the U.S. Marshals Service’ to ‘modify agreements with jails’ that require them ‘to provide voter registration materials and facilitate voting by mail.’”
The Secretary of State warned that the order “creates numerous opportunities for ineligible prisoners to be registered to vote in Mississippi.” He also explained that many of these prisoners could be illegal migrants.
After sending the letter, Watson told FOX: “[I]n Mississippi we’ve got rules and regulations dealing with who can vote when it comes to felons.”
“I don’t specifically think that the Biden administration cares about crossing those T’s and dotting those I’s when it comes to making sure these folks can or can’t vote,” he said. “[T]hey’re going to register them, including illegal aliens in custody so we’ve got major issues and that’s what led to writing this letter.”
“If you look at what’s going on at the border when you’ve got so many illegal aliens pouring into our country, imagine the efforts used to get them to register to vote and that’s what this is all about,” he went on:
It’s about control, it’s about continuing their power, and unfortunately that puts our country in a terrible position, so it’s immediate and it’s something where we hope they will respect our request to stop the program.
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The White House had marketed Executive Order No. 14019 as an “Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting.”
When Biden signed it three years ago, he stated: “The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy.”
“But many Americans, especially people of color, confront significant obstacles to exercising that fundamental right,” the president claimed. “These obstacles include difficulties with voter registration, lack of election information, and barriers to access at polling places.”
“[Agencies] should partner with State, local, Tribal, and territorial election officials to protect and promote the exercise of the right to vote, eliminate discrimination and other barriers to voting, and expand access to voter registration and accurate election information,” Biden wrote at the time.
Watson was elected Secretary of State in 2019 and re-elected last year.
This is not the first time the Republican state elections official has criticized Biden’s controversial executive order.
Weeks after Biden issued it, Watson said in a local news interview:
Think about all these woke college university students now who would automatically be registered to vote, whether they wanted to or not.
…
And then they receive this mail-in ballot that they didn’t even know was coming because they didn’t know they registered to vote. You have an uninformed citizen who may not be prepared and ready to vote, automatically it’s forced on them. Hey, go and make a choice and our country’s going to pay for those choices.
