Protect Our Vote: Stop the Shutdown of Election Security Agencies

As your constituent, I am writing to demand immediate action against a systematic campaign to undermine our democratic checks and balances. Every time Congress or the courts reject the Trump administration's aggressive election agenda, the administration finds a backdoor to subvert those decisions anyway. The pattern is clear and documented: - Congress refused to pass the SAVE America Act, which would disenfranchise eligible voters through deeply flawed screening mandates. The administration responded by holding over $200 million in state anti-terrorism grants hostage unless states enforced those exact same voter-purging tactics anyway. - A federal court blocked the administration from using an error-prone database to purge voter rolls, finding it "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens." Just two days later, the administration blatantly defied the court by forcing states to use that exact same banned database as a condition for receiving FEMA grants. - When courts struck down the administration’s sweeping election executive order, the White House responded with a lawless purge—firing the independent, Senate-confirmed commissioners who refused to weaponize the national voter registration form on the administration's behalf. That last step happened Thursday night. A White House aide sent a two-sentence email firing the remaining commissioners of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC)—the independent, bipartisan agency that certifies voting machines and distributes election security funds. Four months before a national midterm election, the EAC has zero commissioners and cannot function. The EAC is not the only casualty. The Federal Election Commission (FEC)—which polices illegal foreign money in our elections—has lacked a quorum since last year. Meanwhile, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which protects voting systems from foreign cyberattacks, has been systematically gutted. The agency that certifies our voting machines, the agency that keeps dark money out, and the agency that protects us from foreign hacking are all simultaneously leaderless or hollowed out right before Americans go to the polls. This is not a coincidence. It is a strategy to impose through executive action what the legislative and judicial branches have already rejected. I urge you to take action on three fronts: 1. Hold the Line on Confirmations: Replacing EAC commissioners requires Senate confirmation. Press the administration to nominate mainstream, qualified, genuinely bipartisan candidates to restore the agency's mandatory partisan balance. 2. Protect Independent Agencies: Pass legislation explicitly clarifying that independent, bipartisan election infrastructure—like the EAC and FEC—is insulated from sudden, unilateral executive purges. 3. Use the Power of the Purse: Restore funding to CISA, protect EAC grants from political interference, and explicitly ban federal funds from being used to pressure states into election policies that courts have blocked. Our constitutional system depends on checks and balances. I expect you to defend them.