Who Is Watching the Federal Agency That Shapes Our Elections?

MULBERRY, Fla. – Most Americans have never heard of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), yet it influences voter registration, voting technology, and nearly $1 billion in federal election-security funding.

The agency is now operating without commissioners amid reported tensions over the administration’s election-integrity priorities, including proof of citizenship and voting-system standards. The shake-up is also bringing renewed attention to separate concerns about whether the EAC awards taxpayer-funded grants fairly and transparently.

To understand why these issues matter, Americans first need to understand the EAC’s influence over our elections.

The EAC’s Role in Our Elections

The EAC does not run elections. States and local governments do. But the federal agency has significant influence over the systems and processes they use.

Among other responsibilities, the EAC:

• Maintains the national mail voter-registration form

• Develops federal voting-system guidelines

• Certifies voting systems and testing laboratories

• Administers federal election grants

That means its decisions can affect how citizenship is verified through the federal registration process, which voting systems states approve, and how federal election funding is spent.

Those responsibilities also explain why disagreements over the agency’s direction have become increasingly significant.

Proof of Citizenship and the EAC

The national mail voter-registration form requires applicants to affirm under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens, but it does not require documentary proof of citizenship.

In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order on election integrity directing the EAC to add such a requirement. Republican commissioners Donald Palmer and Christy McCormick supported changes to facilitate citizenship verification, while Democratic commissioners Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland opposed them. Because Commission action requires three votes, the proposal failed 2–2.

A federal court later ruled that the president could not require the change through executive order. The ruling did not prevent the EAC from considering proof of citizenship through its own lawful procedures, but the Commission took no final action.

Questions About Taxpayer Funding

The agency has also faced questions about how it distributes taxpayer-funded election grants.

The EAC’s Help America Vote College Program provides grants to recruit and train college students as nonpartisan poll workers. Federal law requires these projects to operate without partisan bias or the promotion of a political viewpoint.

However, a 2024 Foundation for Government Accountability report found that more than 80 percent of recipients in that year’s grant cycle were located in areas that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. Recipients also included a League of Women Voters chapter that has challenged election-integrity laws in Republican-led states.

While this does not prove that grants were awarded for partisan reasons, FGA reported that the EAC did not disclose every applicant or explain why some applications were denied. Without that information, the public cannot independently evaluate whether the process was politically neutral.

Concerns about grant oversight are not new. In 2006, an EAC Inspector General audit questioned two grants totaling $33,750 to Project Vote because the organization could not adequately document how the money was spent.

An election agency distributing taxpayer money should be fully transparent about who applied, who received funding, and how those decisions were made.

What This Means for Election Integrity

The dispute over the EAC ultimately extends beyond four commissioners or a single federal agency. It raises practical questions about who sets election standards, how citizenship is verified, how voting technology is evaluated, and how taxpayer dollars intended for election administration are distributed.

Those issues directly overlap with key reforms outlined in CDF’s CLEAN Up the M.E.S.S. framework.

CLEAN calls for citizenship verification, voter identification, limits on mail-in voting, shorter early voting, accountable precincts, and hand-marked paper ballots with transparent counting. The EAC is especially relevant to CLEAN’s citizenship-verification and paper-ballot principles because it maintains the federal voter-registration form and influences voting-system standards. 

Citizens can use the framework to evaluate election policies, ask informed questions of officials, and advocate for reforms at the local, state, and federal levels.

An agency with this much influence over voter registration, voting systems, and taxpayer funding must operate under clear limits, politically neutral standards, and full public transparency.