The news of House Speaker Paul Ryan's decision inspired alarm among digital security advocates and Democratic election officials. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo Ryan move to replace election agency leader stirs outcry

House Speaker Paul Ryan faced Democratic criticism Thursday after choosing not to renew the term of a federal agency head who has helped lead the charge on securing elections from hackers.

Matthew Masterson, chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, will depart once the Senate confirms a successor, three people familiar with the situation told POLITICO. His four-year term as a commissioner expired in December, but he has stayed while Ryan contemplated whom to recommend to President Donald Trump as a nominee for the seat.


Ryan has decided that Masterson won't be on the list. Another commissioner was already scheduled to take the chairman's slot on Saturday, but Masterson could have remained as a commissioner if he were renominated.

The move comes as the government scrambles to ensure that Russian hackers don't repeat the cyberattacks that roiled the 2016 election. The four-member commission, originally founded to help states apply the lessons of the bungled 2000 presidential election, has taken on an increasingly prominent role in promoting security — to the consternation of some Republicans who say it has outlived its purpose.

The news of Ryan's decision caused alarm among digital security advocates and Democratic election officials.

“It is clear that Republican congressional leadership and the Trump administration simply aren’t interested in ensuring that our elections are protected from Russian interference,” Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill, a Democrat, told POLITICO in a statement.

“If the replacement steps up partisan politics, that would not be good for our nation, or the electorate,” Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, a Democrat, said in an email.

Security advocates and liberal activists also are worried about the potential impact on this year's 2018 midterm elections, when intelligence officials have warned Russian hackers will be back in full force.

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“This is insanity,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, an election security expert who is the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “Matt is extremely capable and has been a champion of more secure and better elections the entire time he's been on the EAC.”

Even the Sierra Club blasted the decision as “inexcusable.”

A Republican and former Ohio election official, Masterson has been with the commission since January 2015, shortly after the Senate unanimously confirmed him to a term that began in 2013.

In February 2017, Masterson took the rotating chairman position. He won praise from state officials and cyber experts of both parties for handling election security in an objective, nonpartisan way.

“Matt has been a great addition” to the EAC, Condos said, “and has frankly worked in a nonpartisan manner.”

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, another Democrat, called Masterson “an effective and collaborative chair,” adding that he hoped any replacement “commands the same level of bipartisan support and respect.”

Masterson learned at the beginning of this year that he would not be reappointed, according a person familiar with the conversation.

“I think the speaker wanted to name someone of their choosing,” said the person, who wasn't authorized to speak on the record. “I think it was a normal appointment process in that regard.”

“The appointment expired in December and we are going in a different direction for our nomination," AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Ryan, told Reuters, which first reported the speaker's decision. "We nominate people for a variety of positions and generally speaking choose our own folks."

Former House Speaker John Boehner, a fellow Ohioan, was the one to pick Masterson in 2013.

The agency's two other commissioners are Thomas Hicks, a Democrat, and Christy McCormick, a Republican who also served on Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission. It has one vacant seat.

According to the commission’s charter, the speaker recommends commissioner nominees to the White House, and the administration traditionally then forwards them to the Senate for approval. No more than two of the four slots can be filled by members of the same party.

The chairmanship switches between commissioners of different parties every year. Hicks, the sole remaining Democrat, will become chairman on Saturday, agency spokeswoman Brenda Bowser Soder said.

But Masterson’s impending departure is bringing new scrutiny to the remaining Republican commissioner: McCormick has expressed skepticism about the urgency of election security and sharply criticized the Department of Homeland Security for labeling elections as “critical infrastructure” — similar to hospitals or banks — at the end of the Obama administration. Numerous states and Republicans were hesitant about the designation, worried that it was a harbinger of federal regulations, a charge DHS has emphatically denied.

McCormick also slammed DHS for releasing a report with digital footprints of Russian hacking, saying it was a political move.

“Using intelligence agencies and reports that are full of allegations … to justify the extraordinary and invasive action of declaring the states’ election infrastructure as critical infrastructure subject to federal oversight is outrageous and wrong,” she said in January 2017, after the DHS designation.

Masterson has spent much of his chairmanship fighting to keep the commission alive. In February 2017, days before he took the helm, the House panel that oversees elections voted to approve a bill that would terminate the agency.

But numerous Democrats are pushing legislative proposals that would give the agency more authority. One offering — the result of a six-month investigation by House Democrats — would even put the agency in charge of disbursing $1 billion in federal election security grants.

The uncertainty about the commission's next leader left digital security specialists queasy on Thursday.

“There is nothing but a rocky ride ahead for us all,” said Hall, of CDT.

Cory Bennett contributed to this report.