With four seats empty and a midterm election three months away, the only federal agency devoted to elections has been left with no one in charge.

"The guardrails Congress placed on this agency are clear and must be followed."

Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice

The email was brief. Three sentences from Morgan DeWitt Snow, deputy director of presidential personnel, terminating the commissioner's position effective immediately. Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, the two Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission, received it on Thursday afternoon. Across the hall, Republican commissioner Christy McCormick was permitted to resign instead.

By the time the trading day ended on Wall Street, the four-person bipartisan panel that sets federal voting system standards and manages the national voter registration form had zero commissioners. For the fourth seat, Republican Donald Palmer had already departed months earlier to join the Heritage Foundation.

The EAC was created by Congress through the Help America Vote Act of 2002 after the hanging-chad debacle of 2000. It issues voluntary guidance on voting technology, accredits testing laboratories for voting machines, distributes election security grants to states, and oversees the federal mail voter registration form that every state must accept. The agency has no enforcement authority, handles no ballots, and maintains no voter rolls. Its power lies in legitimacy. When a bipartisan commission certifies that a voting system meets federal standards, states trust the result.

Translation: when you empty the room, the standards keep running on inertia until someone proves otherwise.

The timing is not accidental. The purges came days after the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, a 6-3 decision that overturned Humphrey's Executor, a 91-year-old precedent limiting presidential removal of independent agency leaders. The White House cited the decision explicitly when asked about the firings. One person familiar with the shakeup said insiders anticipated changes at the EAC the moment the court ruled.

In Slaughter, the court held that statutory provisions restricting presidential removal of FTC commissioners to "for cause" grounds were unconstitutional. The president, the majority concluded, has plenary removal power over executive branch officers. A separate case involving Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook carved out an exception for central bankers, pointing to their unique historical independence.

What the court did not address is whether agencies structured around bipartisan balance fall under the Slaughter rule or warrant a separate exception. UCLA election law professor Rick Hasen called it an open question. If any of the fired commissioners sue, it will be the first direct test.

Translation: the Supreme Court handed Trump a wrecking ball and left the blueprint half-finished.

The EAC's paralysis is immediate and structural. By law, no more than two of the four commissioners can come from the same party, and three confirmed commissioners must agree for the agency to take significant action. With zero commissioners, the Brennan Center stated plainly: the EAC "cannot lawfully make any decisions that affect how Americans vote."

That means no new voting system certifications. No updates to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, the federal standards that states use to evaluate and purchase voting equipment. No resolution of policy questions on laboratory accreditation. The agency is already down to 65 employees after Trump cuts, and its cybersecurity briefings for state and local election officials may not continue.

Matt Weil, vice president for governance at the Bipartisan Policy Center, tried to soften the blow: "Election officials will still be able to administer secure, accessible, and trustworthy elections this November. But they will do so without the full level of support that the EAC normally provides."

The EAC has existed without a quorum at several points in its history. It lacked a quorum for years until the Senate confirmed new commissioners in 2019. But those periods of paralysis happened without an administration actively trying to use the agency to change election rules. This time is different.

The context is the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Trump pushed it through Congress for months. Republicans failed. Speaker Mike Johnson promised one more vote attempt in early July. The bill remains stalled.

Unable to pass it legislatively, Trump pivoted to executive action. In March 2025, he signed an executive order directing the EAC to amend the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship. A federal judge blocked it. He then tried to withhold EAC grant funds from states that did not comply. Another court blocked that too.

Max Flugrath of Fair Fight Action connected the dots: "Since he took office, Trump has pressured the Election Assistance Commission to change election rules to effectively implement the SAVE Act because they can't pass it through Congress. It's another power grab by a desperate president who doesn't want a fair midterm election."

Hasen outlined the scenario that worries election lawyers most: with the EAC emptied, Trump could attempt to direct the commissioner-less agency to implement his agenda anyway. "Most boldly and I would argue illegally, Trump could try to direct the commissioner-less EAC to do his bidding, for example by stating that the EAC must amend the federal voter registration form," Hasen wrote. "If he tries anything like this, it will be high profile and very important litigation that will end up at the Supreme Court on the emergency docket over the summer."

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State called the dismissals "incredibly irresponsible." Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, the group's chair, said the burden would fall on state and local officials to fill the gap. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes called it "irresponsible and dangerous."

On the congressional side, Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrats on the committees with jurisdiction over the EAC, called it "a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference."

A White House official defended the move by quoting the language Trump uses when describing any policy he has not yet implemented: "The President reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America's elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted."

Tim Lim, a Democratic strategist focused on election administration, offered a simpler reading. "Trump couldn't rig the elections through the SAVE Act, so he's now moving unilaterally to subvert the 2026 elections starting with sacking the bipartisan EAC commissioners."

The Federal Election Commission has been without a quorum since April 2025, after Trump fired Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub earlier this year and two Republican commissioners departed. Weintraub did not sue, leaving the question of whether bipartisan election agencies are covered by Slaughter completely untested.

The EAC could be the vehicle that forces the answer. If Hicks or Hovland challenges their termination, the case will hinge on whether Congress's bipartisan balance requirement creates a constitutional exception to presidential removal power. The Supreme Court just told us the president can fire anyone in the executive branch. Whether "anyone" includes people whose positions were specifically designed by Congress to resist partisan control is the question three months from the midterms.

The EAC was created because the country needed an agency that both sides could trust to certify that the machines counting votes met certain standards. Now the agency exists as an empty office, staffed by 65 people who report to nobody, operating under the shadow of a president who wants to change the rules and a Supreme Court that has told him he can fire anyone standing in his way.

The mechanism for trust has been dismantled. What remains to be seen is whether the election it was supposed to protect still needs one.