In this episode, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey speak with Tom Hicks. Hicks was a U.S. Election Assistance Commission [EAC] commissioner from January 2015 until July 9, 2026 — when he was notified via email that his position was “terminated, effective immediately.”
They reflected on Hick’s tenure — some of the efforts he’s proudest of and what he wishes he had more time to do — and spoke about what the EAC is still capable of without commissioners and Hick’s hopes for the agency going forward.
You can read more about Hick’s time at the EAC at: https://www.eac.gov/about/commissioner-thomas-hicks
High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits:
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Associate Producer: Katie Quinn
Digital Producer: Mark Johnson
Transcription of the episode is as follows:
Tom Hicks: You know, you don't try to renovate your own house without talking to an architect, sort of deal. Or you don't try to do electrical work in your house without getting an electrician, unless you have those sorts of skills. I think the four of us had those sorts of skills to deal with elections, and we should have been talked to about that. Talked to, not talked at — is what I constantly say.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]
Eric Fey: All right, welcome to what might be the most exciting episode of High Turnout Wide Margins. I'm Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St. Louis County, Missouri, with my co-host —
Brianna Lennon: Brianna Lennon, County Clerk in Boone County, Missouri.
Eric Fey: And our guest today is —
Tom Hicks: Thomas Hicks, formerly of the United States Election Assistance Commission [EAC]. I'm a little afraid of why this might be the most exciting, but we'll see.
Laughter
Eric Fey: Something different to say, that's all.
Tom Hicks: All right. Awesome.
Eric Fey: But you are very exciting, Tom — there's no getting around that, right?
Tom Hicks: If only our viewers could see my face.
Laughter
Eric Fey: So, Tom, you've been on the podcast before, so the longtime listeners know a little bit about your background already. So, maybe we'll just jump right into it — why are you a former EAC commissioner? What happened?
Tom Hicks: Well, it's a little on the — I don't understand what exactly happened. So, on July 9, I was planning to come to the Election Center. I was talking to the travel folks in our agency, and an email popped up saying that I had been terminated by the Trump administration as a commissioner at the EAC. “Thank you for your service.” So, after 30 years of working for the federal government, to get an email like that is a pretty bit of a slap in the face, I think.
Eric Fey: Were you just upset because it wasn't a tweet?
Laughter
Tom Hicks: I'm upset that I never got to meet the president. I think that if he had met the four of us at the agency, we could have talked to him a little bit about elections and convinced him that the 2020 election was not stolen, and that he did win the 2016 and did win the 2024, but lost the 2020 election.
Brianna Lennon: Well, so let's back up a little bit, too.
Tom Hicks: Okay.
Brianna Lennon: And talk about some of the work that you had done on the commission, had been really positive, a lot of disabilities focused work. What were you hoping to be able to accomplish leading into the 2026 election, and what are unfinished projects that you wish that you had more time for?
Tom Hicks: Well, that's a great question. Thank you. So, I think that one of the things that the agency has built itself on is access — whether or not that's access for folks who have disabilities, whether or not that's access for young people — but I do think that that should continue on. You know, it's in the mandate to say that those who have disabilities should be able to vote independently and privately, and that's the law.
One of the things that I've been working on and hope to continue to work on is having veterans serve as poll workers because they are looked at as a trusted source of former government employees, and if you see a veteran serving as a poll worker, you have more confidence in the election process. Voters should have the utmost confidence in elections, overall, because — I say this all the time — I've yet to meet an election official who wants to be on the TV at 10 o'clock at night explaining what's going wrong with their election. Everyone wants their election to function well, and so, I think having veterans, having other folks serve as poll workers, I think would be great.
So, I'm not going anywhere. I hope to still be able to do this. So, if folks have legitimate jobs out there that they want to talk to me about — I'm leaving all my options open. I'm very expensive, so you get what you pay for.
Brianna Lennon: As you should be.
Laughter
Tom Hicks: So, we'll see. We'll see,
Eric Fey: Tom, now that your tenure at EAC came to this abrupt and unfortunate end, I am curious to know from the time you start — actually going back to the time before you were on the EAC, you were working on Capitol Hill, correct? So, you knew of the EAC, you knew what it did, you worked on issues that affected the EAC — what was your expectation coming in as a commissioner? What did you think you were going to do and accomplish? And what was the reality now that your tenures come to an end?
Tom Hicks: Well, that's also a great question. So, I think that I'm one of a few people who have served on the EAC who actually worked on the actual bill itself — what became the Help America Vote Act [HAVA], but I think I'm the only person who saw its implementation when I worked in Congress for the Committee on House Administration for over a decade. So, seeing those commissioners do their jobs, I think that they did excellent work, but I think that the three of us, when we first came in — Christy McCormick, myself, and Matt Masterson — had a little bit of an added challenge because there were no commissioners for over four years, so we had to rebuild the agency. So, we were doing everything from, you know, basically A to Z in terms of — because we didn't have a lot of folks at the agency doing jobs, overall —
Eric Fey: You talking about staff. Like there was just not staff there.
Tom Hicks: Yeah, staff. So, we filled in the gaps. So, it's basically like building a business from the bottom up, and I think that we did a great job in terms of being invited to various conferences, being invited to various associations to talk to people about elections, overall, and showing them what elections could be.
And I think that it's a hard job in terms of being away from your family — because I was on the road basically every other week. Spent more than 100 nights in various hotels. Got top status on American Airlines, you know, these are things that you don't want, but you're happy to have.
Laughter
Tom Hicks: But it's really rewarding in terms of the love and affection that folks have given me since they found out about this. I hope never to have to pay for my own drinks moving forward, but we'll see. But I do think that the work of the agency is not over, and I do know that there are still great people there, and so, the legacy that Ben Hovland and myself and the two Republicans, Don Palmer and Christy McCormick, have built in the last seven years — I think will be the foundation for elections moving forward.
And I say this all the time, that Americans should have no fear about the way that the election will function in November of 2026 because election officials have done their jobs, in terms of making sure that those who are eligible to vote, should be able to cast their votes and have those votes counted accurately, and I have no doubt that that will happen. The questions I have is, you know, will the results be taken on face value, and so, what will be the reaction to that?
Brianna Lennon: So, I think I have viewed since I've come into the field, since like 2013, that the EAC and CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] kind of grew with the same pathway. They built a lot of trust in the local elections community. You've been present at nearly all of our election conferences in Missouri and CISA was too, and a lot of the lamenting about CISA taking a step back and not having the funding to work with local election officials is that all of those relationships are now kind of disintegrating, and I'm wondering if you can speak to — while there is still staff there, while there is still work that is ongoing, what you see as the future of the relationship between federal elections support and workers and the locals.
Tom Hicks: So, I think that with the Election Assistance Commission, there were a couple of programs that were started that I think will help local election officials. ESTEP — the Election Technology Establishment Program. I forget exactly how it's phrased, but the fact is for e-poll books, setting that program out — which it will be based on the same way as voting equipment — alleviates a lot of the problems and a lot of the frustrations that local election officials will have in terms of being able to have something nationally certified. So, that's one thing. Ballot delivery systems — looking at that sort of thing, election night reporting — I think it would also be something great to look at under ESTEP, but also voter registration. So, starting from voter registration all the way to election night reporting, I think alleviates a lot of that, and I think that EAC will do a good job of that under the mandates that have already been put in place.
I don't know how far they can go without commissioners, but we shall see. I say, you know, test the waters to see how far we can go in terms of making sure that what's best for election officials.
I do think that we played more of a role in terms of elections than CISA because CISA, basically — the Cyber Infrastructure Security Agency — that's one aspect of it, but I think that the EAC played more of a role because they dealt with everything from voter registration to election night reporting. So, more of a — that's not a knock on CISA. That's more of a we were mandated to do more. They do more in terms of, you know, for other sectors, as well — banking, water, electrical grid, and all that other stuff.
So, I think that the relationships can be built, can be structured a little bit more to be able to, I guess, function in a sort of way that — I guess the way that I would describe it is that those relationships were built on trust, and I think that trust is still there with the EAC with the staff. So, they should still be able to move forward.
Eric Fey: Tom, you mentioned when you came in as a commissioner at the EAC, there had been a gap in commission appointments for several years, and that the agency had lost some of its momentum and staff and funding. Do you see that as a danger moving forward? I assume you probably do, and so, to follow up with that — is there a period of time at which you think going out with commissioners is, or going on without commissioners, is going to be very detrimental to the agency? Like one year, two years? What's the timeline?
Tom Hicks: Hopefully, they will have commissioners who want to further the mission of the agency, and not just further their own ambitions. I think that, you know, whether or not that's you know rectified in January or rectified in three years — the agency, I think, has been without commissioners 42% of the time that the agency has been in existence.
In 2027, [it] will be 25 years since the Help America Vote Act was signed into law by President Bush, and I do think that we should look at making further changes to the Help America Vote Act to enhance the way that elections are run because it's not the same as it was in 2000. So, there should be some things that are looked at and some things that the Congress should debate on moving forward. A lot of things they had talked about and just did not do, but I do think that if the agency is left without commissioners for a significant amount of time, that will be detrimental to the ‘28 election and moving forward.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Midbreak]
Eric Fey: Do you think there's a danger if there are no commissioners and there is real talk about amending HAVA in some way, shape, or form that they might consider taking the EAC out of the picture in some way?
Tom Hicks: I hope that's not the case because I do think the agency could function well with good commissioners. I'm not going to say all the commissioners who've ever been there have been in the best interests of the agency, but I do think that there's not been a commissioner there who hasn't felt that they were doing what's best for the agency.
Brianna Lennon: There have been a number of executive orders related to elections.
Tom Hicks: Mhmm.
Brianna Lennon: And some have been directed at the EAC. Some of them have been directed at areas of elections that the EAC has pretty much sole control over, like voluntary voting system guidelines, and it seems, to me, short-sighted to eliminate the ability for the EAC to act on things while simultaneously asking them to act on things, and I would love to hear your thoughts and reflections on what you think the EAC is capable of still doing and what it is that they are being charged with.
Tom Hicks: Well, as I was kind of — as chairman of the agency, I would have looked at an executive order coming to the agency and then evaluated what the agency should be able to do. A lot of those things were frozen because of lawsuits, but I would say that there are things that the executive orders had asked about that both the left and the right side of the political spectrum had agreed on, and so, was it something that we could have looked at to possibly change? And I say maybe. But we were scheduled to have a meeting with the technical development guidelines committee, and we were going to discuss some of those things, but without commissioners there — no changes can really be made.
So, I do think that issuing executive orders without talking to the people who you're asking to do that is not the best thing in the world. You don't try to renovate your own house without talking to an architect, sort of deal. Or you know, you don't try to do electrical work in your house without getting an electrician, unless you have those sorts of skills. I think the four of us had those sorts of skills to deal with elections, and we should have been talked to about that — talked to, not talked at, is what I constantly say. We were in those jobs because we were qualified to be in those jobs, and I think that moving forward to get people who are qualified for those positions would be the best for the country and the world. I've done a lot of work around the world in elections and have been told constantly, “When the U.S. coughs, the rest of the world gets a cold.” So, the way that we look at elections moving forward in our country, we should think about the fact that this will be exported to other countries. So, in looking at the way that the agency was eliminated, would we say that that was okay if it had happened somewhere else? And the answer to that is no. And so, I do think that there should be some sort of, you know, outrage, protest, disagreement on the way that that was done. But I'm not one to cry over spilt milk. It's more of — so, what do we do moving forward? And does Congress act on that? Do the courts act on that? That's for other people to decide.
Brianna Lennon: I think a lot of times when somebody leaves a position, in whatever way they leave a position, they tend to not want to be in that space anymore, or they don't show up at things. We are at the Election Center conference in Kansas City. You are here. Why? Why are you here? Like, what is still motivating you to keep doing this work?
Tom Hicks: So, one of the things was when I was talking to some folks — I had been scheduled to come and scheduled to speak on the federal panel, but I'm no longer speaking on the federal panel because I'm not a federal employee anymore — but some folks said, "Hey, are you going to Election Center?” I said, "No, I'm not going.” And they said, "Why not?” And I said, "Well, two reasons: one, who's going to pay for it? And two, what am I going to do?” And so, I talked to some folks, and they said, "Hey, we still value your opinion. Come to the Election Center,” and so, I'm here, and I'm talking to folks, and I do think that there's a lot of love and support for me and for election officials, overall. And so, this is one of the reasons I don't think that I'm ready to leave the space. And so, looking at aspects for November — most election officials have already laid out everything they're going to do for November. If they haven't, it's because they are waiting for their primaries to be over, and once those primaries are done, then they'll focus in on November, overall.
But I do think that as we move towards federal elections for ‘ 28 or if we have special elections in ‘27 for open seats — that there are a number of things that should be done and looked at. Elections are not the same as they were five years ago, let alone 10 years ago, and so, as elections evolve, I think that my career has evolved in looking at other aspects, as well. So, I'm here because there's so many great people, you know, I think that there's about what? 500 or 600 people here? And I would say that at least 400 of them have come up to me and said, “Thank you for your service,” and it's not just me; it's the actual agency. So, I'm just a small cog in that wheel, you know, basically eye candy for the agency, but it's more of just basically doing the work for the American people.
Eric Fey: So, Tom, you've, as you mentioned, you've seen the span of the Help America Vote Act from conception through implementation, it's going to be 25 years next year, you mentioned. Are American elections better for having HAVA, or is it just a bunch of new federal bureaucracy that costs a lot of money?
Tom Hicks: I think that because of the Help America Vote Act, there is a lot more confidence that elections are being run well. We saw a lot of non-confidence or lack of confidence in Florida in 2000. But I think it took a very strong-willed Congress — 357 members of the House and 92 members of the Senate — to vote for that, and a very strong president in President Bush to sign legislation that said, "Hey, there was a problem with the election that I won, and therefore, I'm still going to look at making changes to it.” So, I think that took a lot of courage to do.
And in the office itself, there's a plaque or a letter — there's a letter signed by President Bush for the agency, and I think that holds a great deal of weight with me. That someone can say, "Hey, the election — I won it, but there were still problems with it that I want to try to change and fix in a positive way. Not for myself, but for the American people and for the country.” I think is huge, and I do think that the country is better off because of the Help America Vote Act.
Brianna Lennon: This kind of goes back to what you were mentioning earlier about our effects on international elections, and just generally, overall. We're a very decentralized country that is in contrast to most other countries, and I think the expectation if we were going to have any sort of centralized election force would be at the Election Assistance Commission. Do you think that in whatever new version of HAVA, or if there were changes to things, or even now, to maybe be an insulation for not having a president being able to come in and just decimate the commission — should it have a stronger role? Should it have a more independent role? I mean, it's already independent, arguably, but should it be more standalone so that it can't be messed with by an elected president? It needs to have some other safeguards, and, if it were like that, would it be better or worse?
Tom Hicks: I don't know if it would be better or worse, but I do think that there should be some safeguards put in place so that once people are put into the office, that they're not basically squeezed. And so, if the three of us — Ben and I being terminated, and then Christie being allowed to resign — are being pressured for whatever issue, what happens when the next president comes in? Does that president get rid of the four commissioners that are there to put other people in that they feel would be doing their bidding? So, I do think there should be some sort of insulation, and, who knows, maybe someone's going to sue on that at some point to make sure the courts address those sorts of issues, but I don't know, we'll see.
Eric Fey: You've been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local elections administration. I'm your host, Eric Fey alongside Brianna Lennon. A big thanks to KBIA and the Election Center for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith. Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. Our Associate Producer is Katie Quinn, and our Digital Producer is Mark Johnson. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.
