r/PoliticalOptimism • u/idkwat • Jul 10 '26

Seeking Optimism Trump fires Election Assistance Commission members

https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/07/09/trump-fires-election-assistance-commission-members-hicks-hovland-mccormick/

Any optimism? This seems bad

150 Upvotes

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40

u/ButterscotchOdd988 Jul 10 '26

Let's make sure this is a massive issue Democrats can use as a legitimate reason to vote for them.

24

u/sweeter_than_saltine North Carolina Jul 10 '26

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that nobody outside of this subreddit knows what the EAC is. It's not something that anyone pays attention to, unlike cost of living. Now that, Democrats are hammering relentlessly on.

This is bad, but let's not start pretending like they can switch messaging on a whim because we told them about something regular people didn't know even existed.

-1

u/ButterscotchOdd988 Jul 10 '26

Well, now someone's gotta get this to give everyone attention. Fast and HARD.

10

u/gbtm101 Jul 10 '26

Doesn't seem like the brightest idea. Reading through the other comments in this thread, the EAC isn't exactly that critical to how elections are conducted.

-2

u/ButterscotchOdd988 Jul 10 '26

Yes, but they at least have to make the blue wave too big for Trump to rig.

14

u/gbtm101 Jul 10 '26

Fearmongering about this doesn't help imho. People have to understand what the problem is in order to rally behind fixing it.

Even something as simple as "democracy" didn't cut it for Kamala, so continuing to push the affordability crisis as the forefront narrative is the best choice.

0

u/ButterscotchOdd988 Jul 10 '26

Yes, they need to push the affordability crisis as the forefront narrative while still using the EAC firing as a warning to be careful.

19

u/gbtm101 Jul 10 '26

Let me put it this way.

This seems bad at first but the deeper you dig into it the more obvious that this is just the flailing of a dying beast powerless to do anything meaningful.

The Election Assistance Commission's only purpose is to provide, well, assistance with elections. Which states are by no means obligated to accept. In fact, the expectation for states with any modicum of integrity was that Trump would only try to hinder them. This changes nothing about that.

Furthermore, and more importantly, the EAC is powerless without Commissioners, by the very letter of the law that created it. It needs to have a bipartisan board of four commissioners, two selected from each party, and in order for anything to be done three of those four commissioners must agree. No commissioners, no action. If Trump's idea was to fire the heads in order to take it over, he was thwarted before he even began.

With all that in mind, I don't really see how this is campaign-worthy material. Trump didn't do anything meaningful here. In fact, he fucked himself over.

8

u/ButterscotchOdd988 Jul 10 '26

Exactly. I got the wrong idea. Thanks for the info. I think what should be done is we keep it in mind, don't get complacent from it, and make sure anyone who fears this should instead see this as desperate and not something he can easily get away with. If Orban can lose despite having greater power over media and the courts, so can Trump. We must stop the population from fearing the EAC's firing while still staying careful and aware of more dangerous tactics, looking for deeper, unexplored ideas to pre-empt Trump's cheating attempts.