Hon. Christy McCormick

Christy McCormick was nominated by President Barack H. Obama and confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate on December 16, 2014, to serve on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Ms. McCormick has twice served as Chair and currently serves as Chairwoman of the EAC and the Designated Federal Officer (DFO) for the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC). She led the Commission’s restructuring after several years without commissioners, created the first election data summit, and the first election accessibility summit focused on language. She has met with voters and legislators across the country and observed in elections in nearly all the states.

From 2006 until her appointment with the EAC, Ms. McCormick served as a senior trial attorney prosecuting discrimination violations of federal voting statutes in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ). Ms. McCormick was detailed by the Deputy Attorney General to be senior attorney advisor and acting deputy rule of law coordinator in the Office of the Rule of Law Coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq from 2009 to 2010, where she worked as the U.S. elections expert overseeing the Iraq national elections (including an extensive election recount), as well as on numerous U.S. and coalition Rule of Law efforts.  

Prior to joining the USDOJ, Ms. McCormick served as a Judicial Clerk to the Honorable Elizabeth A. McClanahan in the Court of Appeals of Virginia from 2003 to 2006. Ms. McCormick was an Assistant Attorney General and Assistant to the Solicitor General in the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia from 2001 to 2003. She was a member of the U.S. Supreme Court legal teams for Black v. Virginia (defending the Commonwealth’s criminal statute against cross-burning) and Hicks v. Virginia (defending a 1st Amendment challenge to a state trespassing policy), as well as in cases on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She was a Judicial Law Clerk in Virginia’s Seventh Judicial Circuit Court from 1999 to 2001.  

Ms. McCormick received her B.A. from the University of Buffalo, a J.D. with honors from the George Mason University School of Law (now Antonin Scalia Law School), and also attended the William & Mary School of Law.