What Lies Ahead for the EAC
There's been a fair amount of attention in recent days to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), created by the Help America Vote Act to oversee and provide nonbinding guidance on election reform. The EAC consists of four commissioners, two of each major party.

Last week, the EAC's former Chair DeForest Soaries (one of the Republicans) resigned, citing a lack of support for the agency as one of the reasons for his decision. He noted that the commission was without offices for the first few months, complaining that the commissioners' "sense of personal obligation has been matched by a corresponding sense of commitment to real reform from the federal government."

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund published this column on Soaries' resignation and Hilary Clinton proposal's to give more authority to the EAC. Fund accuses Soaries of wanting to "expand his bureaucratic sandbox" and opposes expansion of the EAC's responsibilities. He also opines that the EAC presents a danger of "potential for partisan abuse."

Also yesterday, the League of Women Voters issued this statement criticizing the draft guidance that the EAC has provided thus far on statewide registration databases as being insufficient to protect voting rights. According to the League, the draft proposal isn't sufficient to prevent voters from erroneous purges and other administrative mistakes.

My take: Reasonable people can perhaps disagree on whether it makes sense to expand the EAC's responsibilities, but concerns about "partisan abuse" seem quite misplaced based on the EAC's actions to date. With two Democratic and two Republican appointees, this agency is unlikely to be taken over by one party. It's certainly possible that the bipartisan nature of the EAC could result in stalemates, but so far the commissioners have generally demonstrated a willingness to work cooperatively.

Fund is quite right to be worried about partisanship in the area of election administration . . . but he's looking in the wrong place. The real dangers of partisanship come from the U.S. Department of Justice, if its recent actions in the area of ID requirements are any indication. We'd be much better off giving a bipartisan agency like the EAC authority to issue regulations implementing HAVA than to leave the interpretation and enforcement of election laws to DOJ. There's no effective check on DOJ, an agency headed by a presidential appointee, exercising its authority in a partisan manner.

There may well be room for improvement in the EAC's draft guidelines on registration databases, as the League suggests, but it seems to me that there's no agency in a better position to provide neutral guidance. Congress needs to give it the resources needed to do its job properly. - posted by Dan Tokaji @ 10:36 PM