The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC): Overview and Selected Issues for Congress

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is an independent federal agency that is charged with helping election officials to improve the administration of elections and voters to participate in the electoral process. It was established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) as part of Congress’s response to problems with the administration of the 2000 elections. The EAC—and the legislation that created it—marked something of a shift in the federal approach to election administration. Previous federal election laws had set requirements for the administration of federal elections, but HAVA was the first to back its requirements with substantial support. The act authorized grant programs for election administration and an assistance-oriented elections agency, the EAC. That focus on assistance—in combination with other objectives, such as providing for a range of expert input into agency activities and guarding against partisanship—informed the duties and structure of the agency. The EAC’s rulemaking authority is limited, and its other duties are primarily oriented toward facilitating or incentivizing elections activities rather than compelling them. Those duties, most of which are designed to involve opportunities for input from a range of elections stakeholders, include administering grant programs; providing for voluntary voting system guidelines, testing, and certification; issuing voluntary guidance for implementation of certain HAVA requirements; conducting research and sharing best practices; and establishing a youth voter participation and poll worker recruitment program. The EAC consists of an appointed commission, a professional staff led by an executive director and general counsel, an Office of Inspector General, three statutory advisory bodies (Board of Advisors, Standards Board, and Technical Guidelines Development Committee), and one agency-created advisory body (Local Leadership Council). The structure of the EAC, like its duties, reflects its emphasis on assistance. The agency’s advisory bodies are central to its functioning, with opportunities for input into its guidance, planning, and staffing. Voters are represented on one of the advisory bodies, and state officials, local officials, or their representatives make up some or all of the membership of all four. The EAC was also set up to provide for a range of expert input into agency activities and to help guard against partisanship. In addition to voters and state and local officials, the agency’s advisory bodies include experts in various other fields relevant to election administration. The membership and selection processes for the commission and some of the advisory bodies, as well as a quorum requirement for certain actions by the commission, are also designed for partisan balance. Both at the time of HAVA and since, opinions have differed about exactly what role the EAC should play. One question Congress considered when developing the agency was whether it should exist as a separate agency at all. That question was also a subject of particular congressional interest for a period starting with the 112th Congress. As of the beginning of that Congress, the EAC had distributed most of the grant funding it was authorized by HAVA to administer and completed much of the research the act directed it to conduct. The authorization of operational funding for the agency had expired, and the National Association of Secretaries of State had recently renewed a resolution that called for disbanding the agency. Those developments were taken by some as evidence that the agency had outlived its usefulness. Members introduced legislation to terminate the EAC in each of the 112th through 115th Congresses, and the House Committee on Appropriations recommended cutting or eliminating the agency’s funding each year between FY2012 and FY2018. At least as of the 119th Congress, however, debate about whether there is a role for the EAC seems to have receded in prominence. Recent election cycles have seen a number of high-profile developments, including foreign efforts to interfere in the 2016 elections and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2020 election cycle, and the EAC has played a role in the federal response to those developments. It has administered grant funding Congress has appropriated in response to some of them, for example, and provided election officials with resources to help address physical and cybersecurity threats. Supporters of an ongoing role for the EAC have cited its participation in the federal response to recent developments as new grounds to extend or expand it. More generally, the primary focus of legislative activity on the agency seems to have shifted since the 115th Congress from whether there is a role for the EAC to what its role should be.