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Donald Trump has been accused of trying to “rig” the upcoming US midterm elections after he fired the last three members of an independent federal commission.
Trump’s extraordinary move to paralyze the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) wipes out the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration months before the US midterm elections.
Critics, including senior Democrats, vowed to fight back against the Trump administration’s efforts to increase the federal government’s involvement in elections. Trump continues to push the Save America Act, a rightwing makeover of elections that would impose new restrictions on voting.
Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP civil rights organization, said: “Donald Trump knows that in November voters will reject everything he stands for. The economy is devastating, he’s starting endless wars resulting in Americans dying, and his paramilitary ICE police force is terrorizing our communities. Trump is terrified of the sacred power we all hold as voters, and that’s why he wants to rig this election.
“Mr President, your plan will fail miserably. If you think the American people will allow fascism, you are gravely mistaken. The NAACP will do everything in our power to send people to the polls and make their voices heard.”
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic US Senate minority leader, said the move followed Trump’s own suggestion that Republicans should “take over the voting” and called the dismissals a “brazen attempt” to grab control of elections “before a single ballot is cast”.
“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,” Schumer wrote on social media. “He is gutting the independent agency that certifies voting systems and helps election officials run secure elections.”
He added: “Senate Democrats will fight this power grab at every turn. The American people – not Donald Trump – will decide the ۲۰۲۶ election.”
The commission’s two Democrats, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were told by email on Thursday that they were terminated effective immediately, according to people familiar with the matter. Its sole remaining Republican, Christy McCormick, was pushed to resign rather than fired outright, while a fourth seat had already sat empty since Republican Donald Palmer left earlier this year for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank.
The White House has argued the president has the authority to remove officials not fully aligned with securing elections and cited a recent supreme court ruling expanding his power to fire heads of independent agencies. That ruling’s reach into bipartisan bodies such as the EAC remains untested, election law scholars say, since the US Congress deliberately built the commission around an even partisan split.
Other Democrats have since piled on. Senator Mark Warner, of Virginia, said the purge “should concern every American … that demands an immediate explanation”, while Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, accused the administration of manufacturing chaos for election officials nationwide.
Created under the Help America Vote Act after the disputed ۲۰۰۰ election, the EAC does not run elections itself. It distributes federal election security grants, maintains the national mail voter registration form, certifies voting machines against federal standards, and advises state and local officials. With no commissioners left, it cannot vote to take any formal action.
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That leaves the agency unable to update voting standards or the federal registration form, potentially freezing changes the administration has pushed for, including a citizenship documentation requirement already blocked in part by courts. Replacements would again need Senate confirmation, a process that could drag well past the midterms.
Hovland, one of the ousted commissioners, told NBC News the agency had served as a clearinghouse helping cash-strapped states share best practices, and warned that losing it risks real administrative mistakes as the midterms approach.
“When you’re asking more and more of people without giving them the necessary resources, you know, mistakes happen,” he said. “It feels much more like a death-of-۱,۰۰۰-cuts situation than there’s one particular thing that you’re concerned about.”
Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic secretary of state in Nevada and chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said in a statement that the firings were “incredibly irresponsible”.
“The EAC plays a critical role in supporting state and local election officials, and it will again fall on secretaries of state and other election administrators to fill the gap,” Aguilar said. “From cutting funding for cybersecurity to launching baseless investigations, this pattern of behavior from the Trump administration makes it harder for our election officials to do their work and does nothing to make elections more secure.”
