Trump Fires EAC Commissioners in Latest Broadside Against Democracy

Not a day goes by without Donald Trump trying to torpedo US democracy and giving himself more power ahead of a crucial midterm election that will determine whether Congress will exercise any kind of oversight next year or continue to do nothing to hold him and his administration to account. Thursday proved to be no exception as the president fired the two Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and allowed its remaining Republican to resign.

At first glance, the move, which was first reported by Votebeat and leaves the agency unable to act, might appear curious. After all, the EAC is a bipartisan commission – two of its four members are Democrats and two are Republicans – and its function is rather wonkish. It doesn’t create policy and instead helps states administer their elections smoothly.

In addition, it certifies voting systems, issues guidelines for them, and audits the funds appropriated by Congress under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA).

In other words, it’s not exactly a typical target for Trump, who has vowed to try to “nationalize” US elections and “take over the voting.”

However, pro-democracy advocates were quick to point out that essentially gutting an agency tasked with ensuring that elections are conducted in an orderly fashion fits in perfectly with the president’s plan of undermining the integrity of the midterms.

The watchdog group Common Cause said the move is “designed to cause chaos for voters in November,” and that Trump’s “playbook is simple: create chaos, then use it to cast doubt on the results.”

By law, the president won’t be able to simply install new commissioners. While he can appoint their replacements, they must be confirmed by the Senate, and no more than two of them can come from the same party. In addition, a quorum requires that there be three commissioners, so Trump would not be able to simply get Senate approval for two sycophants who can then do his bidding.

However, rendering the EAC impotent also does a lot of damage, as Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, pointed out. She stated that Americans should be “understandably worried” about the move, adding that it is part of the president’s “relentless” and “unlawful” efforts to interfere in US elections.

“He has dismantled all the federal support structures for state election officials,” Weiser said.

For their part, Democrats vowed to fight back.

Calling the firings “a brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that his party would “fight this power grab at every turn.”

And Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who noted that all of the commissioners had been confirmed unanimously, said Trump’s brazen act is “an extraordinary step that demands an immediate explanation from the administration and raises profound concerns about political interference in the institutions that support our elections.”

However, that statement also demonstrates that Democrats are powerless to do much about this since they don’t control either chamber of Congress, which gets to the entire point of Trump’s power grabs.

The president is hellbent on trying to insulate a corrupt and lawless administration from being held to account by anybody, and he is willing to go to extreme lengths to do so.

With less than four months to go before the midterms, it stands to reason that this is not the end of his efforts to rig the upcoming election, it’s still only the beginning.