Trump thinks he found a Trojan horse to seize the midterms. He's wrong.
The White House announced a surprise purge of the nation's top election referees, the clearest sign yet the president intends to cheat in November.
Donald Trump purged top U.S. election officials yesterday and may be preparing a “back-door” implementation of his SAVE America Act. But he’s about to meet a flurry of resistance.
In a shock move last night, the White House gutted the leadership of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the independent agency that helps America run secure elections. The two Democratic commissioners were dismissed by email. Shortly afterwards, the remaining Republican resigned, leaving the organization without confirmed leadership entirely. As of this morning, the commission charged with helping states safeguard ballots and securely administer elections is rudderless, just four months before a national election.
This is the clearest sign yet that Trump plans to meddle in the midterms and that he may have plans to circumvent Congress to carry out a sweeping voter suppression scheme.
At first my stomach sank when I saw the news. Few Americans know anything about the EAC. The commission plays an important role in protecting the vote against meddling, especially from foreign adversaries. After Russia attacked our elections in 2016, I helped stand up the election security task force at the Department of Homeland Security, where we worked hand-in-glove with the EAC and state officials to harden the machinery of American democracy. This included the voting systems, the registration databases, and the back-end infrastructure needed to securely carry out our most sacred democratic ritual.
So an effort to purge the whole leadership team at the EAC is a little more than just an ominous sign. But my immediate concern isn’t just that the firings will hobble the commission’s good work. My worry is what Trump’s team might try to do with the organization’s powers now that it’s leaderless.
Let me start with how all of this became possible, because it wasn’t supposed to be. Ten days ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that the president can fire commissioners of independent agencies at will, tossing out ninety years of precedent that kept these bodies insulated from White House control. The Court basically handed Trump an axe on June 29th. Within ten days, he swung it at the referees of American elections, and the White House isn’t even hiding it. Their own statement cited the Slaughter decision as the “precedence” for the purge.
Of all the independent agencies he could have gutted first (and there are many), he chose the one that touches voting. That tells us a lot. You don’t decapitate the referee unless you’re planning to cheat.
Skeptics will try to tamp down fears by saying the EAC is toothless, and on the surface they have a point. The commission can’t compel states to do anything, necessarily. It certifies voting machines, distributes election security grants, and publishes best practices. Hell, it even sat without a quorum for years during the Obama administration, and elections happened anyway.
Yet even though I’ve described it that way myself, “toothless” misses a key element that I think the White House is considering homing in on. The EAC holds one power that matters enormously right now. It controls the federal voter registration form.
That should set off alarm bells. Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (what experts call the “Motor Voter” law), there’s a single federal mail-in registration form that nearly every state is required to accept. The EAC maintains that form. Back in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that states can’t unilaterally bolt new requirements onto that form, like a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement, without the EAC’s permission. Which means whoever controls the EAC controls whether new requirements get added.
This is where the so-called SAVE America Act comes into the picture. As I wrote about earlier this week, Trump has been hellbent on getting Congress to pass it, even though Republicans say it’s doomed and doesn’t have the votes. The bill would require Americans to produce documentary proof of citizenship, like a passport or birth certificate, just to register to vote, which could disenfranchise millions of Americans in our elections.
Trump won’t take “no” for an answer. He tried to impose the same requirement by executive order last year, and federal courts blocked him, in part because the decision belongs to an independent EAC, not the White House. Now, he’s gutted the EAC, where he’s very likely to install MAGA loyalists who will do his bidding, with or without Congressional passage of the draconian law. Few folks seemed to pick up on this yesterday, so I raised it last night on CNN, flagging that this could very well be a “Trojan horse” for Trump to try to implement the SAVE Act.
A number of my own family members would be disenfranchised from voting if this happens. Several of them have documents that don’t yet match their married names. Again, millions of eligible American voters lack easy access to citizenship documents or updated documents that reflect name changes. Rural voters, poor voters, elderly voters, young voters, married couples. The requirement would fall hardest on people who are indisputably citizens but can’t easily produce the paperwork, which is exactly the point.
It’s naked voter suppression. And the MAGA movement believes it will tip heavily in their favor. That’s why Trump boasted during one of his many America 250th speeches that if the SAVE America Act gets passed by Congress, Republicans “will not lose an election for 100 years.”
Now he thinks he has a way to do it on his own. A captured EAC could conceivably start to do the dirty work right away, under the direction of loyalists the White House plans to parachute into the commission. What’s more, they could rewrite state-specific instructions on the voter forms to create registration traps and onerous requirements, confusing instructions, translation issues, and on and on. Surely, the sycophants in Trump’s orbit are thinking of other evil ways to manipulate the EAC’s powers to steer the elections in Trump’s favor.
But… but… but…
Here’s where I get to tell you why their plan is doomed. And it isn’t because I’m a cock-eyed optimist. It’s because a lot of very good lawyers out there are prepared to tear Trump’s plan to shreds. They know the law, and they know that despite the Supreme Court’s decision, Donald Trump can’t just launch a freewheeling takeover of the agency and wield it however he likes.
First, he won’t be able to put his loyalists in charge the way he probably thinks. EAC commissioners are Senate-confirmed. Yes, Trump can create a vacuum, but filling the leadership team with cronies requires Senate confirmation votes or legally dubious “acting” appointments. In either case, he’ll be met with resistance. He may try to circumvent the requirements, but the moment he does, he creates the opportunity for a lawsuit to freeze the EAC’s work.
Second, the law protects the voter registration form itself. The NVRA says the federal form may only require information that is necessary to determine eligibility. When former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (the godfather of this exact scheme, who the White House tried desperately to install at DHS when I was there) attempted to force citizenship documents onto the form a decade ago, the Tenth Circuit shut him down, ruling the EAC could and should reject requirements that aren’t necessary. The Supreme Court let that ruling stand. You already have to swear an attestation of citizenship on the voter form, under penalty of perjury, which courts have found is sufficient. A citizenship “proof” requirement will get sued immediately if they try to change the form.
Third, agencies can’t just flip on a dime. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, an abrupt reversal of decades of an agency’s position — especially with no clear evidence of the “voter fraud” it purports to solve — is the textbook definition of “arbitrary and capricious.” Courts have thrown out far less blatant reversals.
Fourth, the courts have already rejected Trump’s other attempts to implement these requirements unilaterally. A federal judge in Washington permanently blocked the president’s 2025 executive order and its proof-of-citizenship mandate, and just two weeks ago, another federal court struck it down in a suit brought by nineteen states. There are nuances to those decisions, but the judiciary isn’t rolling over to let Trump hijack voting in America.
Also, for what it’s worth, the plaintiffs are ready. I suspect lawsuits are being drafted as I write this. Some of the same groups we’ve funded at DEFIANCE to help sue the Trump administration over unconstitutional conduct are probably preparing legal briefs this very morning. I know state attorneys general are gearing up, too. When I say that we’re better prepared for these types of anti-democratic shenanigans than we were the last time, this is what I mean.
Trump may think he found a Trojan horse. What he actually found is a trap of his own making. Every action he tries to take to abuse the EAC will be met with resistance and tie him up in litigation as the clock ticks to November. The president’s corruption may be brazen, but it’s also sloppy and short-sighted. And we’re going to keep fighting it in the courts, in the states, and in the open, where schemes like this one go to die.
Your friend, in defiance,
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