Unelected bureaucrats have a well-deserved reputation for grinding things to a halt. That’s especially true when it comes to election integrity efforts.
The grinding is particularly pronounced in the movement of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14248 on “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”
The president signed the EO on March 25. It was an urgent call to secure a wounded elections system that, contrary to assertions from left-leaning “voter rights” groups and their stooges in the accomplice media, has been anything but “the most secure in American history.”
Six months later, the work to meet the moment, to restore faith in America’s elections, has gotten bogged down in leftist-led court challenges, intransigent elections officials, and, per usual, slow-walking bureaucrats.
The frustration is growing.
“177 DAYS since @POTUS ordered new standards to secure elections,” The Republican National Lawyers Association posted on X.
“177 DAYS of @EACgov GOPers doing EVERYTHING they can within the law to adopt Pres. @realDonaldTrump‘s plan.177 DAYS of lefty, unelected bureaucrats on an ADVISORY committee abusing the law to stand in the way,” the Republican National Lawyers Association tweeted last week.”
“Disgraceful.”
It’s now been 185 days, five days past the 180-day deadline Trump set for the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to “take appropriate action to review and, if appropriate, re-certify voting systems under the new standards established under subsection (b)(i) of this section, and to rescind all previous certifications of voting equipment based on prior standards.” The executive order calls on the four-member bipartisan commission to amend the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0 to establish “standards for voting systems to protect election integrity.”
What’s the holdup? Bureaucratic dysfunction? Always. But the usual muck of politics in the Trump Derangement Syndrome era is at work as Democrats, their leftist “nonpartisan” allies and, in some cases, Republican-led election offices do what they can to gum up the works.
‘I Am Not Prepared to Make a Vote’
Last week, the EAC held a virtual meeting with the Byzantine-sounding Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) to, it was assumed, vote on TGDC’s recommendation for the next iteration (2.1) of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. The VVSG lays out minimum standards on the operation of voting systems used by states when selecting election equipment.
When EAC Chairman Don Palmer called the vote to approve the agenda, TGDC member Bryan Caskey moved to amend the agenda to remove the vote. Caskey, who serves as Kansas State Director of Elections and represents the tech committee on the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) said he hadn’t received “sufficient feedback” from NASED members on the draft Voting System Guidelines.
“At this time, I am not prepared to make a vote so I am making a motion to remove that from the agenda,” Caskey said.
Palmer seemed surprised by the delay. Committee member David Wagner, a Computer Science professor at the University of California-Berkeley, asked what the TGDC’s next step was after members were supposed to hold a final discussion on the draft guidelines and then vote.
Palmer said as the Designated Federal Officer of the Guidelines Development Committee he would consult with EAC leadership and his fellow commissioners.
“But I will say I am not inclined to do this every week for the next five to 10 weeks so we can wait for the National Association of State Election Directors, whose representatives are here today, to actually provide input,” he said. “So, I’m not inclined to have additional meetings. That’s my input, and for this committee to meet I have to be present.”
‘No Secret’
Some committee members expressed concerns about proposals in the guidelines. They complained that the process was moving too fast. But moving expeditiously is what the president called for in his election integrity order.
Here’s where politics clearly seeped into what is supposed to be a nonpartisan process.
A day before the Technical Guidelines Development Committee meeting, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., ranking member of the Senate’s Committee on Rules and Administration, sent Palmer a letter requesting he “halt consideration” of the draft guidelines. The letter, signed by fellow Democrat, New York Rep. Joe Morelle, ranking member of the House Administration Committee, accused the EAC of “ceding its independence — and the independence of the [Voluntary Voting System Guidelines] process — and is attempting to amend the VVSG to meet the whims of the President’s unlawful Executive Order.”
“From the beginning, you have made no secret of the fact that changes are being made to these independent guidelines based on the EO,” the indignant Democrats huffed.
‘Utmost Confidence’
The liberal lawmakers assert Trump’s order is “unlawful” because federal court judges like U.S. District Judge Denise Casper, appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, have slapped injunctions on the implementation of the president’s EO. They have often done so sweepingly, running afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling restraining the abusively broad use of nationwide injunctions. The Trump administration has appealed the challenges by blue states and a host of leftist groups feverishly fighting an executive order calling for the means to secure “free, fair and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion.”
They have fought tooth and nail against the election integrity executive order, including provisions that require voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship before they may cast a ballot in a federal election, limit the left’s ever-expanding voting season through a ban on mail-in and absentee ballots that arrive after — oftentimes long after — Election Day, and, through the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines establish updated regulations for voting machines.
Trump wants do away with mail-ballots, a system of voting fraught with security concerns. His executive order calls for implementation of “methods that produce a voter-verifiable paper record. And it directs the Election Assistance Commission to bar voting systems from using QR codes or barcodes in tallying ballots, with carve-outs to accommodate voters with disabilities.
Some states are already there or moving there.
A Georgia law signed last year mandates the removal of QR codes from ballots by next year. Interestingly, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold led the effort to make Colorado the first state to remove “QR” codes from ballots.
“Coloradans should have the utmost confidence in the results of our elections,” Griswold told CBS4 This Morning in 2019. The elections chief was at the forefront of the Centennial State’s unconstitutional move to remove Trump from the Colorado primary ballot.
‘Created Within and Incubated By’
The National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) move to delay the vote on the voting system guidelines is also interesting. The nonpartisan association’s mission is to promote “accessible, accurate, and transparent elections in the United States and U.S. Territories.” NASED is funded through membership dues, fees to its biannual conference, and “corporate affiliate membership.”
Microsoft is a “Gold Level” affiliate member. An organization known as VotingWorks is a Silver Level member. Dominion Voting Systems is a “Bronze.”
According to nonprofit tracker InfluenceWatch, VotingWorks “is a left-of-center non-profit provider of voting machines and open-source election verification software.”
“VotingWorks was created within and incubated by the left-leaning Center for Democracy and Technology,” InfluenceWatch reports. “CDT’s major donors include large left-of-center foundations, including George Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Ford Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation.”
Reached for comment Thursday, Caskey, NASED representative on EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee, told The Federalist to contact his office’s communications directors. She did not return a voicemail message asking whether NASED was influenced by anyone or groups to move to delay action on the guidelines.
There is definitely a concerted effort by a variety of players to defy Trump and his push for election integrity.
Palmer said his goal is to “keep the ball moving forward.”
“With this process, the EAC is committed to improving the security of our voting systems,” the commission chairman said.