Name: Leaked documents show White House blocked government website used to recruit election workers during the pandemic
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Leaked documents show White House blocked government website used to recruit election workers during the pandemic

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Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile.Redeem nowSign up for our newsletter to receive our top stories based on your reading preferences — delivered daily to your inbox.Something is loading.The ask seemed noncontroversial at a time when the nation, pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic, was desperate for volunteers to staff polling stations for the 2020 elections."I formally request that authority over the domain name be delegated to the EAC," Election Assistance Commission Executive Director Mona Harrington wrote on July 15 to a General Services Administration contractor that administers US government websites that end in ".gov."But the request instead triggered a tug-of-war between two divisions of the federal government — one bipartisan and statutorily independent, the other part of the Trump White House — over a critical voting matter, according to a series of emails exclusively obtained by Insider.&nbsp;The EAC, a federal agency tasked with helping Americans vote, expected approval within a day or two.&nbsp;Two days passed, then a week — no response.&nbsp;EAC officials planned to use HelpAmericaVote.gov to recruit and coordinate with an army of new poll workers amid a pandemic that had already sidelined tens of thousands of older election volunteers unable or unwilling to staff in-person voting sites.A shrinking pool of poll workers had forced many cities and towns to cut or consolidate in-person polling sites during presidential primary contests, putting untold numbers of voters at risk of disenfranchisement. Some urban areas with large populations of Black or Latino voters — from to and in areas such as , Arizona — were at particular risk.Read more:By late July, with no word back on their request, EAC officials were growing nervous, fretting that further delay would torpedo the agency's plan for a splashy nationwide launch of a late-summer poll-worker recruitment campaign.&nbsp;"This is an urgent request … time is of the essence as our press release and other relevant materials are supposed to go out in the next day or so," Harrington wrote in a July 27 email to officials at the GSA and the White House's Office of Management and Budget, which had recently named itself the final arbiter of approving new ".gov" websites.On July 31, OMB broke its silence.&nbsp;"The request for HELPAMERICAVOTE.GOV has been denied by OMB," Justin Grimes, an official in OMB's Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer, wrote. "The request was denied because it did not justify the creation of a stand-alone site."The requests and rejection also came as President Donald Trump's false claims that the US elections were "rigged" and fraudulent were reaching a crescendo.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Upon rejecting the EAC's request, OMB on July 31 told the EAC that it could resubmit its request and "provide a new justification" for obtaining the HelpAmericaVote.gov domain. The EAC could also simply give up and publish poll-worker recruitment information to its own website using the unmemorable address of www.eac.gov/help-america-vote.&nbsp;EAC officials immediately resubmitted their HelpAmericaVote.gov request. Grimes predicted the review would take one to three days.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then they waited, again."Do you have an update on this request?" Harrington wrote to Grimes on August 4 in the first of several emails the officials traded during the next two days. "We really are in an urgent situation to get this up asap. Each day that goes by is one less day to recruit poll workers to work the polls for November. Our campaign was supposed to launch Aug 1."&nbsp;Harrington wrote again on August 5. "This is really negatively impacting our progress at this point. Please advise, we desperately need the domain," she told Grimes."We have to get this up today," she wrote to Grimes on August 6.Grimes responded later that day: "I've re-upped and escalated this request but I am still waiting for a response from others involved in this process."Finally, just before the end of the workday on Friday, August 7, the EAC got what it wanted."The request has been approved … there are no additional steps you need to take for this request (other than typical technical configuration)," Grimes wrote to Harrington.The EAC launched HelpAmericaVote.gov on Monday, August 10, about four months before Election Day.&nbsp;More than half a million people would go on to visit the site, the agency said, including 100,000 on September 1 — National Poll Worker Recruitment Day. And a "new generation" of poll workers — many of them younger and working for the first time — helped the nation avoid a rash of shuttered polling stations and long Election Day lines, EAC Commissioner told Insider.Read more:"A lot of Americans didn't know this was a way they could serve their community and their country, which is why we wanted to leverage a national campaign to help local officials," Hovland said.Ultimately, the 2020 cycle was "the best-run election I've seen in my career, without a doubt," Hovland said. "A lot of Americans — so many — stepped up. It's a shame that story has been lost somewhat in the conspiracy theories and accusations about the election."Americans cast nearly in the 2020 general election — more votes than any US election ever."Reliable, abundant information about voting is key to democracy," said Walker McKusick, the national director for the nonpartisan nonprofit organization . "And it's critical to have reliable information about the government from the government."OMB officials declined to answer specific questions about how it approved ".gov" websites and whether the delay in HelpAmericaVotes.gov's launch hindered the nation's poll-worker recruitment efforts.In a statement to Insider, OMB, which is led by Trump-appointed , said it rejected the EAC's request for HelpAmericaVote.gov "because the information provided did not justify the creation of a stand-alone site based on existing requirements. OMB worked with EAC given the importance of the topic to improve the justification which led to approval."Until recently, the White House's OMB wasn't as intimately involved in government-website management.&nbsp;&nbsp;In a separate statement to Insider, the General Services Administration, which had overseen distribution of ".gov" website domains since 1997, confirmed it was no longer involved in approving or denying federal agencies' website requests.GSA said OMB in February 2018 "made a decision to perform the adjudication of all new federal executive branch .gov domain requests to limit the proliferation of executive branch stand-alone .gov websites/domains and infrastructure."Read more: The statement added: "Once the DotGov program office at GSA receives an application for a new .gov domain for an executive branch agency, it forwards the application to OMB."&nbsp;It now usually takes between two days and six weeks for OMB to approve a ".gov" website request, "depending on but not limited to how much information is provided to justify a creation of a new .gov domain," GSA said.&nbsp;The EAC disputes OMB's assertions that its HelpAmericaVote.gov request fell below standards. It first said in a July 27 email to OMB that its request met the federal government's published .Hovland added his agency's request for the HelpAmericaVote.gov website contained all the information OMB required and that he was "surprised" approval was so difficult to obtain.&nbsp;Was OMB's delay in approving the website politically motivated?"I don't have any information on that," Hovland said. "I certainly hope not."Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know.Subscribe to push notificationsAn icon in the shape of a lightning bolt.Keep readingIt indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options.Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.

Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile.Redeem nowSign up for our newsletter to receive our top stories based on your reading preferences — delivered daily to your inbox.Something is loading.The ask seemed noncontroversial at a time when the nation, pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic, was desperate for volunteers to staff polling stations for the 2020 elections."I formally request that authority over the domain name be delegated to the...

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Dave Levinthal

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Leaked documents show White House blocked government website used to recruit election workers during the pandemic

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