...but you probably already knew that.

Trump Fires a Federal Election Board, Panic Ensues
Here’s a chance for Democrats to embrace decentralized elections.
By
The Editorial Board
July 10, 2026 5:50 pm ET

President Trump on Thursday forced out the entire bipartisan leadership of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which is his latest flexing of the principle, now endorsed by the Supreme Court in Trump v. Slaughter, that executive agencies aren’t constitutionally independent. On the practical implications, however, the partisan rhetoric is ahead of reality.

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, reacting to the firings, accused Mr. Trump of “a brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast.” Yet voting in America is run by states and localities, and the EAC’s role is appropriately modest. Created in 2002, it hands out grants for election security, last year $15 million. It publishes a biennial report full of voting statistics. It oversees certification of election equipment to a set of Voluntary Voting System Guidelines.

While some of the EAC’s functions are useful, the November elections would go on even if the agency were hit by an asteroid and vaporized. The agency has four bipartisan seats. Mr. Trump fired two Democrats, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. A Republican, Christy McCormick, was “allowed to resign,” news stories say. A fourth seat was vacant. Basic functions can continue under the EAC’s staff. When Mr. Hovland arrived in 2019, the press release said it was “the first time in a decade that the commission has had a full quorum.”

Yet there’s a turducken of ironies nesting in the response to Mr. Trump’s firings. Democrats have sought for years to nationalize election rules in their favor. H.R.1, the bill they pushed under President Biden, would have let the EAC dole out money for recruiting poll workers and running state redistricting commissions. Mr. Trump’s move to assert control of the EAC is a chance for Democrats to repent and embrace the wisdom of decentralized elections.

The last national freakout involving the EAC was in early 2025, when Mr. Trump issued an executive order telling it to add a citizenship check to the “national mail voter registration form.” This was blocked by the courts.

Now that Mr. Trump has fired all the commissioners, can he even make a second attempt? Or does he have to wait until the Senate confirms replacement commissioners? Three EAC members are required for major action, including a Democrat.

Mr. Trump’s cleanout of the EAC is probably the first of many such firings after Slaughter. That makes this a ripe moment for lawmakers to reconsider all of the authority they spent decades handing to Washington’s alphabet soup of “independent” agencies. “Would Congress have delegated so much power,” as Justice Neil Gorsuch asked in his Slaughter concurrence, “had it known that the President would come to control them?”

If Democrats decide they want to pare back the federal bureaucracy, they’ll find many willing Republicans. The details might vary agency by agency, but maybe the EAC’s work could be done by, say, the National Association of Secretaries of State. Yet many Democrats are too busy instead imagining what a President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could do with the same power if they win in 2028.

Meantime, states and counties are busy with the actual work of making the midterm elections happen. Mr. Trump is probably willing to do whatever he can to help Republicans keep Congress in November. At every twitch, Democrats will cry havoc. Both the right and the left are happy to cast doubt on elections, when it suits them. The comforting reality is that the ballots are controlled by thousands of different state and local officials.


Link: EAC