Donald Trump fired the remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, July 9, reducing the four-member agency to zero and triggering fears that the 2026 midterm elections will be run without federal oversight.
The EAC is an independent, bipartisan agency created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, after the contested 2000 presidential election exposed the fragility of American election administration. It distributes federal election grants to states, more than $1 billion since its founding, certifies voting systems, maintains the national mail voter registration form, and accredits testing laboratories for voting equipment. It is supposed to have no more than two commissioners from either party.
All four commissioners are now gone. Democrats Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland received termination emails from Morgan DeWitt Snow, deputy director of presidential personnel. “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 email read.
Republican Christy McCormick was allowed to resign. Republican Donald Palmer had already left earlier in 2026 to join the Heritage Foundation.
The firings were enabled by the Supreme Court’s late-June ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, which held that the president may remove the heads of independent agencies at will. The ruling overturned decades of precedent. But the Court also created an exception for central banking, leaving an open question: do bipartisan election agencies like the EAC and the Federal Election Commission qualify for a similar exception?
That question has not been tested. Trump had already fired FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub earlier in 2026; she did not sue. If any of the fired EAC commissioners challenge their removal, it would be the first direct test of whether the Slaughter doctrine applies to election commissions.
With no commissioners, the EAC cannot function. It cannot certify voting systems, meaning states that rely on EAC approval for new equipment cannot purchase or update it. It cannot update the national voter registration form or distribute grant money. In practical terms, one of the few remaining federal agencies providing election security guidance is now frozen.
This is not the first time the EAC has been without a quorum. Years of Senate-confirmation delays have left it paralyzed before. But this time is different: the paralysis is the result of a deliberate presidential act, firing all commissioners at once, not of congressional inaction.
The impact on the 2026 midterms, just months away, is hard to overstate. Voting system certification has stalled. Election security support, already weakened by Trump’s gutting of CISA, has been further diminished. The national voter registration form, which Trump had tried to alter via executive order to add proof-of-citizenship requirements, cannot be lawfully changed because there is no commission to act.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes called the move “irresponsible and dangerous.” The Brennan Center’s Michael Waldman said it “leaves the agency without leadership and unable to carry out its major responsibilities.” Former EAC officials described the commission as having been a “dead man walking” since the Slaughter decision.
The legal question will likely land in court. The practical question is more immediate: American elections are administered by the states, but they depend on federal infrastructure that the president has just dismantled.
[AP News]