A House panel voted Tuesday to eliminate an independent federal agency charged with helping states to improve their voting systems, keeping them modernized, secure and accurate.
The Election Assistance Commission, which was created in 2002 after the 2000 Florida recount, was eliminated by the House Administration Committee in a 6-3 vote along party lines.
It’s unclear if the bill, dubbed “Eliminating the Election Assistance Commission,” will make it to a full House floor vote. But the effort comes after President Trump has promised to set up a panel to investigative nationwide election fraud.
According to Trump, 3 to 5 million people voted illegally during the 2016 presidential election, a claim White House has not backed up with data.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have expressed skepticism of the claim, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday he doesn’t believe federal dollars should be spent to investigate voter fraud.
Voting rights groups had been vocal in their opposition of the bill, and say the EAC is essential to protecting the right of Americans to vote.
A group of 38 organizations and people sent a letter his week to the committee’s chairman Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., saying the bill would “impact the way we administer and finance national elections.” Signatories of the letter included the AFL-CIO, Crew, League of Women Voters and NAACP.
“At a time when the vast majority of the country’s voting machines are outdated and in need of replacement, and after an election in which foreign criminals already tried to hack state voter registration systems, eliminating the EAC poses a risky and irresponsible threat to our election infrastructure,” said Wendy Weiser, the democracy program director at the Brennan Center for Justice, in a separate letter to Rep. Harper.
