Overview
- The White House terminated two Democratic commissioners and accepted the resignation of the remaining Republican, leaving the four-seat bipartisan EAC empty with no commissioners able to vote.
- The EAC cannot approve actions that require a three-commissioner quorum, which stops voting-system certifications, accreditation of test labs, grant approvals, and changes to the national mail voter registration form.
- The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Trump v. Slaughter as legal grounds for the removals, saying the president may remove officials who are not aligned with his election-security priorities.
- Democrats, voting-rights groups, and legal scholars said the move looks like political interference and signaled likely lawsuits and congressional oversight to test whether the new removal-power doctrine applies to bipartisan commissions.
- Any replacements must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate under HAVA, a process that can be slow, so career staff may run day-to-day work but cannot carry out decisions that require the commission’s formal vote.