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Donald Palmer was nominated by President Donald J. Trump and confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate on January 2, 2019, to serve as a United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Commissioner. Mr. Palmer currently serves as Chairman of the EAC and the Designated Federal Officer (DFO) for the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC).
During his term as EAC Chairman, Mr. Palmer and the Commission instituted a standards development and testing process to establish security, functionality, and accessibility standards for electronic poll books, part of a larger EAC testing program. The initiative resulted in the establishment of the Election Supporting Technology Evaluation Program (ESTEP) for the testing of election supporting technology, including ballot delivery, election night reporting, and voting technologies related to HAVA. Commissioner Palmer provided leadership in the updating of the EAC testing program manual to include penetration testing requirements for testing campaigns of all voting systems submitted to EAC-accredited laboratories.
Mr. Palmer has served as the DFO of the EAC’s Standards Board and the Board of Advisors on different occasions, and the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) during the implementation phase of Voluntary Voter System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0, including the adoption of the EAC Lifecycle Policy for the transition to a new generation of voting systems.
Mr. Palmer is a former Bipartisan Policy Center Fellow where he advanced the recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. Mr. Palmer is a former Secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections and served as the Commonwealth’s Chief Election Official from 2011 to 2014. During his tenure, he implemented an online voter registration system and testing program to review the security and usability of voting systems and electronic poll books. He was a state leader in interstate registration data-sharing, exchanging voter registration information to maintain accurate voter registration lists. He also served as Florida’s Director of Elections where he successfully transitioned the state from electronic voting machines to paper-based digital voting machines prior to the 2008 presidential election and expanded the Florida voting system state certification program.
Prior to his work in election administration, he served as a trial attorney with the Voting Section in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where he enforced the nation’s federal voting laws, including HAVA and the Voting Rights Act. Palmer is a military veteran, retiring from the U.S. Navy after two decades as an intelligence officer and judge advocate general.
Mr. Palmer earned his J.D. at the Stetson University College of Law and his master’s degree at George Washington University.