CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is co-leading a coalition urging the U.S. Department of Education to reconsider its guidance to postsecondary schools allowing funds from the federal Work-Study Program to be used to hire students to register voters and work in polling places.
The program provides funds for part-time employment to help needy students to finance the costs of postsecondary education for civic engagement work that is not associated with a particular interest or group consistent with the law.
“Don’t get me wrong: the Work-Study Program helps a lot of students, but this new guidance appears politically motivated and has the potential to be weaponized,” Morrisey said, writing in the letter the guidance “offends restrictions on the federal-work study program and ignores the dangers that come with entangling public dollars in political functions.”
Morrisey
| File photo
The letter, addressed to the assistant secretary of the DOE’s Office of Postsecondary Education, cited the guidance’s many flaws, including violation of federal law.
“Your guidance effectively licenses colleges and universities to subsidize (political) activity — and potentially swing elections by choosing where to direct these funds — with taxpayer money,” Morrisey wrote. “That approach violates limitations imposed by law.”
Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Utah joined the letter led by West Virginia and Indiana.
