(ThyBlackMan.com) An opportunity is before us to change how one federal agency assists with American elections positively. Little-known but quietly exerting powerful influence on election practices across the country, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which was established in 2002 in the Help America Vote Act, now must face the same scrutiny applied to the rest of the federal government.
Where does the EAC stand with budgets slashed, positions dissolved, and waste, fraud, and abuse exposed across many departments and agencies? Does it meet the basic America First standard of making it Easy to Vote but Hard to Cheat?
As the former Secretary of State in Ohio, I know how important it is to pay attention to detail when running an election. Election administration is an important and professional undertaking. It requires competent staff, adherence to consistent standards, security protocols to protect sensitive data, and the ability to overcome numerous challenges that may arise.
The EAC was originally created to assist elections administrators who were trying to run elections smoothly and effectively in their state or county. The present stated goal of the EAC is to be an “independent, bipartisan commission whose mission is to help election officials improve the administration of elections and help Americans participate in the voting process”.
Currently, the EAC has several roles—publishing public resources for elections administrators and voters, overseeing the certification, decertification, and recertification of voting systems, conducting post-election research and data gathering, and administering federal dollars to the states via grants earmarked explicitly for elections administration. While all these tasks are important for today, we are learning in this new Administration that any agency or department must be closely analyzed to get anything beyond the status quo.
Fortunately, there are significant areas for improvement and even a potential mission expansion that would fill a critical need in the area of election security. Here’s the plan.
The first major step is to evaluate EAC staff at all levels. Similarly to other agencies and departments, all positions should be assessed and determined if they are mission-critical. Any positions dedicated to DEI should be immediately terminated.
Second, there needs to be an analysis of the EAC grant programs for any waste, fraud, abuse, or partisanship. The definitions of “voter registration,” “voter education,” and “get out the vote” should be strictly clarified to ensur
Part of this clarification should be that any vendor associated with a political campaign should be ineligible from receiving these grants from the state to which the money is issued. For example, in late 2020, an investigation was launched into the EAC grant recipient firm SKD Knickerbocker. The State of California had awarded a $35 million contract to SKD Knickerbocker to engage in non-partisan voter registration. However, the firm was clearly involved in aiding Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, even linking its website to Biden’s 2020 campaign. For months, the OIG slow-walked the investigation, failing to respond to evidence provided by the Congressional House Oversight Committee. The OIG must have competent, quick-to-act staff who appreciate integrity in the grant process, and no partisan influence should be allowed in choosing state vendors.
The third major step is to increase transparency surrounding which states are upholding laws and principles that promote election integrity and election security. Once the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (voting system standards regularly published by the EAC) are updated, a list should be published on the EAC website of which states meet these standards and which do not. Additionally, the EAC should publish a new “best policy practices” for elections, highlighting the need for critical, commonsense policies such as identity verification to vote, enacting an Election Day deadline for ballot receipt, prohibiting private money in elections administration, banning foreign money from ballot initiatives, and more. Then, the EAC should publish a list showing which states are adhering to these best practices and security standards and which are failing to do so.
Fourth, discretionary grants should only be awarded to states following the current security and technology protocols issued by the EAC, whose voting machines meet the latest standards and whose election laws protect voter integrity. Only these states demonstrating that they take protecting voters seriously should be considered for discretionary grant funding.
The fifth major step bridges a major flaw that exists in election integrity: establishing an interstate voter roll database within the EAC. Several attempts have been made at this before—most notably through the Crosscheck system and through the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). Crosscheck was taken down due to legal issues and ERIC remains a highly controversial system due to allegations of lack of voter privacy, serious transparency issues, and voter data sharing with partisan organizations.
However, an interstate voter roll database housed within the EAC could provide states with voter roll cross-checking services by requiring each state to provide an updated voter roll on the first day of each month and then cross-reference these voter rolls against each other to scan for overlapping registrations. The EAC could then provide each state with a list of these overlapping registrations by the 10th day of each month and then require a report by the 25th day of each month indicating what action had been taken by the state in response to the flagged individuals. The EAC could also crosscheck voter rolls against the Social Security Administration’s death records and the Department of Homeland Security’s non-citizen records to flag potentially ineligible individuals further. States refusing to participate should be ineligible for discretionary grants.
Allowing the EAC to maintain control over this process would increase transparency around state voter rolls, promote state accountability, and increase voter confidence in the accuracy of the electorate’s eligibility. It would also remove any partisan conflict of interest, minimize the potential for data breaches due to high federal data security standards, and free up states to focus their elections administration resources elsewhere.
We have an opportunity before us to reform and better the EAC truly. Strengthening existing agency functions, encouraging state adherence to election integrity and election security, and promoting transparency and accountability in the states will only increase American confidence in elections. Americans deserve to trust their elections, and the new administration can promote this trust through reforming the EAC. It is time now to act, reform, expand, and spur action to put all American voters first equally and make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Written By Ken Blackwell
Official website; http://twitter.com/kenblackwell
