A national security expert was left stunned Friday after President Donald Trump purged the leadership of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Thursday night, a move effectively “disabling the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration” at a time when the president is pushing to enact sweeping changes to election law.
“As of this morning, the commission charged with helping states safeguard ballots and securely administer elections is rudderless, just four months before a national election,” wrote Miles Taylor, who served in the first Trump administration as Homeland Security chief of staff, in an analysis published on his Substack Friday.
“This is the clearest sign yet that Trump plans to meddle in the midterms and that he may have plans to circumvent Congress to carry out a sweeping voter suppression scheme. At first my stomach sank when I saw the news.”
Trump has already moved to impose restrictions on mail-in ballots for the upcoming midterm elections, a move that a federal judge has since declined to pause but remains blocked in 23 states. He’s also aggressively pushed GOP lawmakers to advance his controversial bill known as the SAVE Act, legislation that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, which critics have described as a form of “voter suppression” that could disenfranchise millions of voters.
And on Thursday, according to the nonprofit organization Votebeat, Trump “fired the three remaining members” of the EAC, leaving the commission with no commissioners.
Taylor called the development “a little more than just an ominous sign,” and said what he feared most was what “Trump’s team might try to do with the organization’s powers now that it’s leaderless.”
“The EAC holds one power that matters enormously right now. It controls the federal voter registration form,” Taylor wrote. “That should set off alarm bells.”
Taylor theorized that Trump's gutting of the EAC could serve as a "Trojan horse" to force through his push to seize control of states' voter rolls. Trump has already enacted rules compelling states to share voter roll data with the federal government by threatening to withhold federal funding, and the SAVE Act includes a provision that could force under-resourced states to hand over that data as well.
“A captured EAC could conceivably start to do the dirty work right away, under the direction of loyalists the White House plans to parachute into the commission,” Taylor wrote.
“What’s more, they could rewrite state-specific instructions on the voter forms to create registration traps and onerous requirements, confusing instructions, translation issues, and on and on. Surely, the sycophants in Trump’s orbit are thinking of other evil ways to manipulate the EAC’s powers to steer the elections in Trump’s favor.”
