The White House Presidential Personnel Office sent termination emails to the remaining commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission on July 9, and the language left zero room for interpretation: "On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately."
The EAC is a four-member body created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. It oversees election administration standards — voting system guidelines, testing and certification, and resources for state and local election officials. Republican Commissioner Donald Palmer had already voluntarily left the agency earlier this year, leaving three seats occupied. Now all three are empty.
The removed commissioners include Chairman Thomas Hicks and Commissioner Benjamin Hovland, both selected by congressional Democrats, along with Vice Chair Christy McCormick, who was selected by congressional Republicans. The fact that Trump cleared out the Republican appointee too tells you this wasn't a partisan trim. This was a full reset of an agency the administration concluded wasn't doing its job.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes called the move "irresponsible and dangerous," saying the administration "remains dead set on causing chaos for our election officials." Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, added that "these removals leave the agency without leadership and unable to carry out its major responsibilities."
The Brennan Center has been arguing for years that the EAC is essential infrastructure for election integrity. Which raises a fair question: if the agency was so essential, what exactly was it producing? The EAC's primary outputs are voluntary guidelines that states can adopt or ignore, testing standards for voting machines, and grant distribution. None of that stops functioning because the commissioners are gone — the career staff and existing standards remain in place.
What does change is who sets the direction. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was itself a response to the 2000 Florida recount debacle. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 established the broader framework. Both laws were designed to standardize and secure elections. Whether the commission created to implement those laws actually made elections more secure or simply added a layer of federal bureaucracy that made it easier to resist state-level reforms is the real debate happening underneath the outrage.
An agency built to restore public confidence in elections had become a symbol of exactly the opposite.