Dismantling Federal Assistance to US Elections — Good, Bad, or Ugly?

The U.S. Congress is in the process of dismantling the Federal agency that provides assistance to the local election offices that run all U.S. elections, and to the states that oversee them. That is the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), a small agency that’s not well understood by a great many people — including several who have been asking me, and other election technology experts, whether dismantling it is wise, and what the effects will be.

I aim to answer all those questions, but in multiple short segments, of which this is first. I want to first lay out some of the issues that people need to decide for themselves whether it is a good or bad idea, or whether there are consequences that could be ugly. Then in other segments, I’ll get to some of the functions of the EAC that will be missed when it is gone, and the consequences of the gaps created by EAC’s exit.

Original Mission: Accomplished?

How you might think about dismantling the EAC is of course largely driven by what you think its function and value is. One of its original functions was part of a critical response to the hanging chad filled election dysfunction of the 2000 election — a good chunk of Federal funding to help states replace flawed voting systems with ones that didn’t depend inconsistent human interpretation of ballots (think of those photos of Florida election officials squinting at punch ballots to see exactly how the chad was hanging). A major function for EAC was to manage the disbursement of funds to states for eligible projects including but not limited voting system replacement.

That’s one reason why it might be good to dismantle EAC with a “mission accomplished” status: those funds are long gone, and the post-2000 voting replacement is finished. But what about EAC’s other election assistance activities? To be sure, states and localities are getting some ongoing support in terms of election management resources, research and data, and a small batch of ongoing grant money to disburse. But is it vital? How much value is really being delivered to EAC beneficiaries in state and local government? Clearly, some in Congress and elsewhere don’t think that the ongoing value is high, and most of the value desired by the original Help America Vote Act (HAVA), that created EAC, has already been delivered.

Mission Evolved

As a result, I think that it’s not a bad idea, and not even ugly, if you consider the value of the EAC in the original context of HAVA and EAC’s original mission. But that was well over a decade ago and a lot has changed. In following segments, I want to highlight some of the functions of the EAC that have evolved over time, and have become very important — indeed visibly very important in the last year. That change over time, the public visibility, means that a couple odd corners of EAC’s original mission might be quite important indeed. And, as EAC is being dismantled, there are important questions about how states and localities might or might not be able to pick up the slack in these important areas.

Here’s a teaser for those changes. Just in the last year, the public at large has learned what election experts have known for a while: the current voting systems (mostly paid for by HAVA) turned out not to be as wonderful as hoped, are wearing out, needing replacement, and were not and are not designed to be robust against manipulation against state sponsored adversaries. In short, we now know that U.S. elections are a target, a national security risk, and they run on antique insecure technology.

What’s EAC’s connection with that? More next time.

— EJS