On Monday, December 11, 2017, Property of the People mailed a letter to the General Services Administration’s Committee Management Secretariat asking that Christy McCormick be terminated from the President’s Advisory Committee on Election Integrity.
52 U.S.C. § 20923(d)(2), which governs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, explicitly states that “[n]o member appointed to the Commission under subsection (a) may engage in any other business, vocation, or employment while serving as a member of the Commission and shall terminate or liquidate such business, vocation, or employment before sitting as a member of the Commission.”
Christy McCormick serves on the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). McCormick was also appointed to serve on the President’s Advisory Committee on Election Integrity (PACEI).
McCormick’s dual positions matter not only because they violate the letter of the law, but also the spirit.
The EAC is an independent agency. When Congress creates independent agencies, it is with the intention that their officers discharge their duties independently of presidential control. Influence from the executive, whether direct or indirect, must not enter the calculus of the officer’s decision-making. This concept dates back to the very founding of our nation. McCormick’s service on the PACEI, a commission created by President Donald Trump, himself, threatens to blight McCormick’s service on the nonpartisan, independent EAC.
We are in a moment where confidence in the American electoral system is profoundly low. Preserving the credibility of the bodies tasked with overseeing voting policy is critical for future elections, and as such, Christy McCormick cannot be allowed to hold dual positions at the EAC and PACEI.
The only way to resolve this circumvention of federal law is for Commissioner McCormick to resign from the PACEI. That is why we asked the General Services Administration Committee Management Secretariat, given their primary role in monitoring compliance of federal advisory committees, to take immediate action on this matter.
