republicans want to abolish Election Assistance Commission

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/election-assistance-commission-republicans-congress/516462/

Russell Berman Feb 13, 2017

Every odd-numbered year since 2011, Republicans in the House have tried to kill the Election Assistance Commission—the tiny federal agency responsible for helping states improve their voting systems. None of their previous efforts made it very far, and with Barack Obama in the White House, the 15-year-old commission had little to fear.

This year, the same fight has taken on much greater urgency.

Congressional committees are investigating whether a foreign power tried to hack the U.S. election. The new president is convinced that widespread fraud cost him millions of votes. And with an ally in the Oval Office, House Republicans have begun moving faster than ever before to eliminate an agency they say is unnecessary and wastes taxpayer money.

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As a budget-cutting measure, scrapping the EAC would be roughly akin to a household deciding to forgo two-ply toilet paper in favor of the flimsier variety for a few months. Congress appropriated just $8 million to the commission in the last fiscal year—about a third of what the agency used to receive and a minuscule fraction of the $3.54 trillion federal budget in 2016. Republicans say it’s a good place to start, but Democratic defenders of the EAC argue that despite its small footprint, the commission serves important functions and that it’s especially foolhardy to get rid of it at a time of heightened concerns about the integrity of U.S. elections. “This is the time when we should be focusing on strengthening the only federal agency charged with making elections work for all Americans, not trying to eliminate it,” said Representative Robert Brady of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee.

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