Following Democracy Docket Reporting, Election Advocates File Complaints Against Federal Election Panel

A pro-democracy organization has filed two formal complaints asking federal watchdogs to look into potential illegal actions and partisanship inside the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent federal agency tasked with helping states administer elections.

At the core of the complaints are allegations first reported by Democracy Docket.

In October, Democracy Docket reported on inflammatory, partisan comments made by EAC Commissioner Christy McCormick during a panel discussion on voting at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute (AFPI). 

“They need the votes. They’re losing ground,” McCormick said when asked why she thinks the left opposes measures to tighten voting rules. “Everybody is seeing how people are going toward the right.”

“They need open borders, they need illegal citizens to increase their votes,” McCormick continued. “And this is why they’re fighting so adamantly against us.”

Voting rights experts and Democratic officials swiftly condemned McCormick’s rhetoric and called for her resignation. 

Last month, Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonpartisan legal advocacy group founded by lawyer and former Obama administration official Norm Eisen, filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel asking for an investigation into McCormick’s potential violations of the Hatch Act, which generally prohibits federal employees from leveraging their offices for partisan ends. 

The EAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Democracy Defenders Fund also filed another complaint with the EAC’s inspector general, following a Democracy Docket opinion piece written by Susan Greenhalgh, the senior advisor on election security at Free Speech For People. In it, Greenhalgh noted that the EAC was beginning a process to decertify election equipment using old software that no longer receives security updates. While periodically ensuring voting systems are up-to-date seems entirely reasonable, Greenhalgh said, the timing here is suspect.

In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on voting that purported to direct the EAC to amend its voting system guidelines and potentially decertify voting systems that use QR codes or barcodes to record and count votes, even though Congress established the EAC as an independent federal agency. Then, at the October AFPI event, Commissioner McCormick said the EAC’s end-of-life review was being conducted “in accordance with the president’s order.”

“If the EAC aims to decertify election equipment before November 2026, it could cause chaos for countless jurisdictions,” Greenhalgh wrote. “This would include the entire state of Georgia, multiple counties across Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, and many other states.”

The Fund’s complaint essentially asks the EAC inspector general to answer some of the questions Greenhalgh raised: “Why is the EAC rushing to address this now, after ignoring it for so long? Why isn’t the Commission first developing requirements in the existing testing and certification program to cause vendors to update systems in a timely way, before it contemplates decertification? Why is the EAC reversing its previous stance that ruled out decertification?”