Off with Their Heads!

Off with Their Heads

Now it begins. On the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision in Slaughter, the president has fired the entire board of something called the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). In previous purges including Slaughter, the president fired only democrats. This time he fired everyone, republicans included. In case you didn’t know (I didn’t either), the EAC hands out grants for election security, a whopping $15 million last year, publishes a biennial report on voting statistics and oversees certification of election equipment against a set of Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. I’m sure all of that is important, but none of it seems vital to national security, or even to election security. If it’s really that dispensable, the president might as well eliminate it outright — except that would require an act of Congress.

The board members received the following email: “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. Thank you for your service.” So why fire everyone? Because the president was angry at the commission. He had ordered it, via executive order, to add a citizenship check to the “national mail voter registration form” and the courts blocked that order. It’s not clear why he fired the board over an order the courts had blocked. Wouldn’t those same courts just as easily veto a citizenship check added by a newly confirmed board?

Then there is the Constitutional which dictates that elections are run by local governments, not the federal government. Democrats tried to seize control of elections with HR 1and now Trump is attempting something similar with the SAVE Act. But the National Mail Voter Registration Form itself is a minor document. Even if the citizenship check had gone through, states reportedly could have opted out of using it. Here’s the form: eac.gov/voters/national-mail-voter-registration-form

Yet as they do with most things Trump does, the democrats are treating the firing of the EAC board as a national catastrophe. Chuck Schumer put it this way: “Donald Trump said Republicans should ‘take over the voting.’ Today, he took another step toward doing exactly that. Firing every remaining member of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission months before the midterms is a brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast. He is gutting the independent agency that certifies voting systems and helps election officials run secure elections. Senate Democrats will fight this power grab at every turn. The American people — not Donald Trump — will decide the 2026 election.”

Schumer, never one to mince words, knows this will not be the outcome of Trump’s actions and is condemning an action that the democrats would love to have taken themselves.  Even if Trump manages to replace the board and get his picks confirmed, it’s now all but guaranteed that the next democratic president will fire them too and install his or her own people. By law the board must be “bipartisan,” meaning any democrat nominated by Trump would immediately be suspect. And going forward, Trump — and every president after him — will be able to fire any board member at any time, without cause. Maybe some people would accept such an appointment but I would not. I believe I am not alone in saying that if I were to accept a nomination it would have to be to a position that always served at the pleasure of the president – such as a cabinet position – and not some piddling election commission.

It would be ironic if the courts, in handing Trump this kind of power, ended up motivating democrats to push for shrinking the number of federal agencies under the executive branch. They might even find some republicans willing to join them. But I doubt it because the democrats know that Trump is doing them a big favor by increasing the scope of power that befalls the next democrat who occupies the White House. In the end, the loser is the American people and when was the last time that was important to our Washington politicians?

Note: I woke up this morning to the news of the passing of Senator Lindsey Graham. I was no fan of the senator’s and was critical of his “bomb them all” attitude yet his death saddens me. I hope he rests in peace.