Election Assistance Commission has been eliminated by Orange King Trump

Pete Johnson
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News

Tom Arthur from Orange, CA, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

America's Orange King steps up his attack on voting rights, in an effort to save himself from overwhelming negative views of his administration in the midterm elections.  In the past week, this man eliminated the Election Assistance Commission.

EAC Leadership Gutted

President Trump ousted the remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, leaving the agency without a quorum just months before the midterm elections. The commission's two Democratic commissioners, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were fired via email from the White House. Its sole Republican commissioner, Christy McCormick, resigned, and a fourth commissioner had left in April.

The White House justified this action by citing a recent Supreme Court decision (Slaughter) that expanded the president's power to fire members of independent agencies. A White House statement said the president "reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America's elections".

This leaves the commission unable to take up new business, such as changing the national voter registration form or updating voting system guidelines. Critics, including Democratic lawmakers and election officials, condemned the move as a "brazen attempt to seize control of our elections" and a dangerous act that "undermines the integrity of nonpartisan election administration".

Bypassing the EAC: The National Emergency Proposal

Crucially, reports indicate that the White House had spent months prior to the firings exploring ways to bypass the EAC entirely. According to sources, officials reviewed a proposal from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declare a national emergency and create a federal task force. This task force could compel states to address voting system vulnerabilities without going through the EAC. This discussion underscores the administration's frustration with the EAC's slow, methodical processes and its desire to force changes more directly.

Broader Strategy to Reshape Voting

The EAC firings were not an isolated incident. A comprehensive analysis describes them as part of a four-pronged strategy to shape the election battlefield before votes are cast. Other related actions from the past week include: