President Donald Trump has pushed out the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, leaving the bipartisan agency in limbo ahead of this year’s midterms. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter cited by ProPublica, Trump fired Benjamin Hovland and Thomas Hicks, the Democrats on the commission. Christy McCormick, the Republican, was allowed to resign, with the commission’s abrupt dismantling alarming voter advocacy groups and Democratic state election officials.

The immediate operational concern is simple: the EAC’s board has been designed to function with bipartisan governance, and removing the remaining members threatens continuity right when election administration gets most intense. Cisco Aguilar, Nevada’s secretary of state and chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said the EAC “plays a critical role in supporting state and local election officials,” adding that it “will again fall on Secretaries of State and other election administrators to fill the gap.” A White House official would not confirm the specific actions, but told ProPublica that 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.”

To understand why this matters beyond the headlines, you have to look at what the EAC actually does. The Election Assistance Commission was established in 2003 to set standards for state voting systems and to provide funding for upgrades. Its four-member board is meant to be evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Commissioners are nominated by the president based on recommendations from congressional leadership and then confirmed by the Senate. In April, the fourth commissioner, Don Palmer, a Republican, resigned. That left Hovland, Hicks, and McCormick as the remaining trio. By dismissing them now, the administration can try to install replacements that are more aligned with its direction.

The timing also intersects with a specific policy initiative that has been brewing inside the EAC. In March 2025, Trump issued a sweeping executive order directing the EAC to change the national voter registration form, which serves as a template for forms in each state, to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. The current setup in almost all states is an attestation of citizenship under penalty of perjury, without requiring proof. ProPublica reports that a Trump-aligned law firm, America First Legal, petitioned the EAC to change the form. The EAC posted a notice seeking comments and received hundreds of thousands of them, but it had not yet held a vote.

So the bigger story here is not just staff churn. It is what happens to pending votes, standards-setting, and guidance when the commission is effectively unable to operate as designed. ProPublica notes that the EAC has been plagued by partisan infighting and ineffectiveness, along with chronic vacancies and a lack of funding. At the same time, it has made progress in recent years, including passing new standards for voting machines and creating resources and recommendations for election officials. Often, decisions were unanimous despite its partisan split. That mix of progress and dysfunction is exactly why the EAC is valuable when it works, and why its current limbo is such a risk.

Hovland’s own account underlines the stakes at the ground level. He had been a commissioner since 2019 and, according to his interview, was in Missouri on Thursday visiting a local election office and an early voting location when he received an email from the White House telling him he was fired. He said he was visiting to learn about new measures protecting election workers. He also said he is proud of new EAC resources for election workers, including “social media templates to communicate with voters” and “decks of cards” designed to help train workers on how to respond to Election Day scenarios. In response to the White House’s framing, Hovland said the commission had been working in a bipartisan way “to find constructive solutions to support election officials in maintaining the security and integrity of our elections.” Hicks and McCormick did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

For decision-makers watching from adjacent rooms, the second-order effect is that elections oversight and election administration guidance do not disappear when a federal board stalls. But they shift. Aguilar’s comment points to where the burden lands: state and local election officials and secretaries of state who must “fill the gap.” Meanwhile, groups tracking election administration, like the Bipartisan Policy Center, described the departures as a “significant loss for one of the federal government’s few institutions explicitly designed around bipartisan governance.” And if the EAC cannot act through its intended mechanisms, the open question becomes how quickly states adapt to policy changes that were already in motion, such as the voter registration form direction linked to the proof-of-citizenship requirement.

In short, this is a control-and-timing play with operational consequences. By removing Hovland, Hicks, and leaving the commission without its remaining board members, Trump can move toward replacements that may better match the administration’s demands. For election stakeholders, tech and vendors that sell election infrastructure, and policy leaders who rely on federally developed standards and guidance, the practical outcome is instability at the exact moment when clarity matters most.