# Quorum Loss and Delegated Authority Crosswalk A multimember federal board is a body that can only act by counting. Take enough seats away and the counting stops — and the usual way this is described, in the press and in the agencies' own statements, is that the body is paralysed. That description is right about some functions and wrong about others, and the line between them is not where intuition puts it. The line was drawn by the Supreme Court in 2010, in a case about a Labor Board that had tried to prepare for exactly this. Three weeks before it expected to lose two of its four members, the Board voted to hand all of its powers to a three-member group, on the theory that two of that group could then carry on. The Court held that the group had to keep three members to exist at all, called the arrangement a "Rube Goldberg-style delegation mechanism," and invalidated the basis on which two members had decided almost 600 cases over the following 27 months. But the opinion also carries a footnote that is the most useful sentence in this whole subject: the holding **does not** reach delegations the Board had earlier made to people who were not members of the group — its regional directors and its General Counsel. So there are two kinds of delegation, and only one of them survives. A power handed *sideways*, to a smaller set of the same officers, dies with the seats. A power handed *downward*, to staff who were never going to be confirmed by the Senate in the first place, does not notice that the seats are gone. This is a crosswalk of six bodies against that distinction: the [[Election Assistance Commission]], the [[Merit Systems Protection Board]], the [[Federal Election Commission]], the [[NLRB]], the [[Federal Labor Relations Authority]] and the [[Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board]], set against the quorum rule in each organic statute, what survived, what froze, and whether anybody could do anything about it. Two of the six are the reason to draw it now. One has had no members at all since July 2026 and is still certifying the voting machines American elections run on, because a quorum that no longer exists wrote down in advance who would decide. Another has every seat filled, a statute expressly saying vacancies do not impair it, and a function that has been dead for nine years and ten months — because the function was vested in one Senate-confirmed officer and there was no one below to hand it to. Companion to [[Agency Head Removal Protections Crosswalk]], which maps what a statute can give an officer to keep the job, and to [[Delegation of Authority]] and [[Provisional Quorum]], which are the concepts underneath. Additive to [[Executive Branch Org Chart]], which maps the seats themselves and carries none of this. > [!note] How to read this chart > **★** = Senate confirmation required · **§** = the rule is in the organic statute, so the body cannot change it · **☐** = the rule is in a regulation or policy the body wrote itself · **▣** = this function continued through the quorum loss under a delegation made beforehand · **✕** = this function froze · **◎** = the hinge, the point where the design decides the outcome · **⊘** = written in law with no remedy attached · **⚑** = a structural point worth stopping on · **◈** = this page's own arithmetic, reported by no source · **[unconfirmed]** = no primary source found in this survey; not asserted. > > **No officeholder is named inside the fence.** Every row is a statute, a policy instrument or a date, because the question here is what the law does to a seat when nobody is in it. People appear in the Notes, as the subjects of removals and rulings. Statutes are as in force November 2026; agency statements and case law were read on 11 November 2026, the day after the most recent development on the page. ``` QUORUM LOSS AND DELEGATED AUTHORITY — SIX BODIES, AND WHICH WAY THE POWER WENT │ Legend: ★ Senate confirmation § rule is in the organic statute │ ☐ rule is in a regulation or policy the body wrote itself │ ▣ continued under a delegation made BEFORE the seats emptied │ ✕ froze ◎ the hinge ⊘ written in law, no remedy attached │ ⚑ structural point ◈ this page's own arithmetic │ [unconfirmed] no primary source found in this survey │ Time-slice: statutes as in force Nov 2026 · sources read 11 Nov 2026 │ No officeholder is named inside this fence. │ ■ PART A — THE RULE THE COURT DREW IN 2010 │ New Process Steel, L.P. v. NLRB, 560 U.S. 674, decided 17 June 2010, 5-4, │ Stevens, J. (Roberts, C.J., Scalia, Thomas, Alito; Kennedy, J., dissenting │ with Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor). 29 U.S.C. § 153(b) has three sentences │ that matter and they pull against each other: │ ├─◆ THE DELEGATION SENTENCE │ "The Board is authorized to delegate to any group of three or more │ members ... any or all of the powers which it may itself exercise." │ ├─◆ THE VACANCY SENTENCE § │ "A vacancy in the Board shall not impair the right of the remaining │ members to exercise all of the powers of the Board." │ ├─◆ THE QUORUM SENTENCES § │ "three members of the Board shall, at all times, constitute a quorum │ of the Board" — "except that two members shall constitute a quorum of │ any group designated pursuant to the first sentence hereof." │ ├─◆ WHAT THE BOARD DID WITH THEM, 20 DECEMBER 2007 │ Four members sitting, two departures expected. The Board delegated │ litigation authority to its General Counsel AND delegated all of its │ powers to a named three-member group, effective 28 December 2007. One │ of the three was a recess appointee whose commission expired on 31 │ December 2007. From 1 January 2008 the remaining two decided cases as │ a quorum of the group. │ ├─◆ HELD ✕ │ "the delegation clause requires that a delegee group maintain a │ membership of three" — "We hold that two remaining Board members │ cannot exercise such authority." Once the third member left, the │ group "ceased to exist." The arrangement is called a "Rube │ Goldberg-style delegation mechanism," and § 153(b) "does not │ authorize the Board to create a tail that would not only wag the │ dog." Reversed and remanded. │ ◈ 27 months · almost 600 cases decided by two members · 70+ of them │ already challenged in the courts of appeals when the case was heard. │ └─◆ AND THE FOOTNOTE THAT IS THE WHOLE SUBJECT ◎ Footnote 4: the holding does NOT affect the Board's earlier delegations to people who were not members of the group — its regional directors and its General Counsel. SIDEWAYS DELEGATION, to a smaller set of the same confirmed officers, dies when the seats go. DOWNWARD DELEGATION, to staff who never needed the Senate, does not. Every row in Part B is on one side of that line or the other. │ ■ PART B — THE SIX BODIES │ Read each row as: seats · what it takes to act · where that rule is │ written · status · what survived · what froze · who can complain. │ ├─◆ 1 ... ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION — ZERO MEMBERS, STILL CERTIFYING ⚑ │ Seats .......... 4 ★, no more than 2 of one party │ To act ......... approval of at least 3 members § │ 52 U.S.C. § 20928: "[a]ny action which the Commission │ is authorized to carry out ... may be carried out only │ with the approval of at least three of its members." │ Status ........ one seat emptied by resignation in April 2026; the │ remaining three emptied 9 July 2026 — two by emailed │ termination, one by requested resignation. NO MEMBERS │ APPOINTED since. ◈ 125 days as of this page's date. │ Second time in the agency's history with no members. │ Delegation ..... ▣ "The Commissioners may delegate authority through │ policy adopted by the approval of at least three │ members." The instrument is the 2024 Organizational │ Management Policy, adopted while four members sat and │ replacing a 2015 policy and a 2008 roles policy. │ Survives ...... ▣ voting-system testing and certification · the │ voting-system test laboratory program · field │ services · ESTEP · disbursement and oversight of │ election-security grants, including resolving audit │ recommendations · federal advisory committees under │ their existing charters · the election-administration │ survey · clearinghouse and outreach · drafting policy │ "for consideration of Commissioners once appointed." │ Freezes ....... ✕ adopting or modifying the Voluntary Voting System │ Guidelines · any new or modified Commission policy · │ modifying a program manual · regulations and the │ national mail voter registration form (§ 20929) · │ evidentiary public hearings (§ 20925) · accrediting a │ new laboratory or revoking an accreditation (§ 20971) │ · final annual and statutory reports (§ 20927). │ Remedy ........ ⊘ none named. No suit over the July 2026 removals was │ reported in this survey. │ ◎ THE LIST SORTS ITSELF: everything that survives is APPLYING a rule │ already written. Everything frozen WRITES OR CHANGES a rule. │ ├─◆ 2 ... MERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION BOARD — THE JUDGES KEPT JUDGING ▣ │ Seats .......... 3 ★, 7-year staggered terms │ To act ......... 2 members ☐ │ The number is in 5 C.F.R. § 1200.3 — a regulation the │ Board itself writes — not in 5 U.S.C. §§ 1201-1204. │ Status ........ down to one member 10 April 2025 after a removal and │ an expired term; quorum restored 28 October 2025 when │ a new member was sworn in. ◈ 201 days. Two of three │ seats filled since; a chairman was sworn in 21 August │ 2026. An earlier lapse ran 7 January 2017 to 3 March │ 2022 — ◈ 1,881 days, and the longer precedent. │ Survives ...... ▣ administrative judges continued issuing initial │ decisions "pursuant to longstanding delegated │ authority" — the agency's own words, and a downward │ delegation of exactly the kind footnote 4 preserves. │ The Clerk of the Board kept docketing petitions for │ review and could grant a petitioner's withdrawal. │ Freezes ....... ✕ final decisions on petitions for review, and │ anything else requiring a Board vote. │ Remedy ........ ◎ THE BEST ANSWER ANY BODY ON THIS PAGE HAS, AND IT │ IS ACCIDENTAL. If nobody petitions for review, the │ initial decision BECOMES the final decision of the │ Board and is appealable to a court under 5 U.S.C. │ § 7703. So a federal employee who loses in front of │ an administrative judge can reach a court of appeals │ by declining to appeal to the Board. An agency that │ loses cannot: it has to file the petition that no │ one can decide. ⚑ And the 35-day petition deadline │ at 5 C.F.R. § 1201.114 was never tolled. │ ◈ The 2017-2022 lapse left about 3,800 cases at headquarters; all but │ 9 had been decided by April 2025, and the inventory is now reported │ as eliminated. The 2025 lapse produced no comparable backlog. │ ├─◆ 3 ... FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION — 559 DAYS, AND COUNTING ✕ │ Seats .......... 6 ★, not more than 3 of one party │ To act ......... 4 affirmative votes for core functions § │ 52 U.S.C. § 30106(c). The Commission's own filing in │ a 2025 case puts it plainly: "for these core actions, │ FECA has an implicit quorum requirement of four." The │ four-vote rule is not a majority of those serving — │ it is four, however many seats are filled. │ Status ........ 2 seated. Without four since 1 May 2025, after one │ dismissal, one resignation in January 2025 and a term │ expiry on 30 April 2025. ◈ 559 days as of this page's │ date — the longest live lapse on this page, and the │ third time since 2019 the Commission has fallen short. │ Two nominations were sent up on 11 February 2026; a │ Senate committee hearing on them was reported as │ scheduled on 10 November 2026. Not confirmed. │ Delegation ..... NONE found in this survey. ◎ And none can now be │ made, because adopting one would itself take four │ votes. This is the trap: the design cannot be fixed │ from the inside once it has failed. │ Survives ...... compliance review of campaign-finance reports · │ acceptance of complaints alleging violations · real- │ time publication of filings · trainings · answering │ inquiries. ⚑ All of it is intake and output. Nothing │ in that list reaches a decision about anybody. │ Freezes ....... ✕ resolving enforcement matters and audits · │ implementing rules · issuing advisory opinions · │ initiating, defending or appealing a civil action │ (§ 30107(a)(6)) · reason-to-believe votes │ (§ 30109(a)(2)) · and, on a sitting commissioner's │ account, even an administrative vote to schedule or │ cancel a meeting. Public meetings were cancelled │ through the end of 2025. │ Remedy ........ ⊘ A COURT ORDER THAT CANNOT BE OBEYED. On 26 June │ 2025 a district court held a complaint dismissal │ arbitrary or capricious — the reasons given were "too │ conclusory" — and ordered the Commission to conform │ within 30 days under § 30109(a)(8)(C). Two of the │ four who had voted to dismiss were gone and could not │ explain themselves, and conforming would take four │ votes. On 23 July 2025 the Commission moved to hold │ the case in abeyance "until such time that the │ Commission regains a quorum of at least four │ Commissioners." A private party's statutory suit runs │ to a body that cannot answer it. │ ├─◆ 4 ... NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD — THE SIDEWAYS CASE, AGAIN ✕ │ Seats .......... 5 ★ │ To act ......... 3 members; 2 of a validly designated group § │ 29 U.S.C. § 153(b), Part A above. │ Status ........ quorum lost in late January 2025 on the removal of a │ member; restored 7 January 2026 when two members │ confirmed on 18 December 2025 were sworn in alongside │ a confirmed General Counsel. ◈ 345 days. A fourth │ member was confirmed 7 August 2026; 4 of 5 seats │ filled, 3-1 on party lines. │ Survives ...... ▣ regional offices, administrative law judges and the │ General Counsel's prosecutorial discretion — the │ downward delegations footnote 4 protects. ⚑ On 14 │ February 2025 an acting General Counsel rescinded 29 │ of his predecessor's memoranda. A General Counsel │ memorandum is not law; it directs what the regions │ investigate and prosecute. So agency POLICY moved │ during the freeze, in the one channel that was open. │ Freezes ....... ✕ Board decisions. By the Board's own tradition, │ three affirmative votes are needed to overturn │ significant precedent, so nothing could be reversed. │ Remedy ........ none. ⚑ The 2007 delegation device of Part A was │ available in 2025 only to a Board that still had │ three members to designate a group from, and once │ below three it could not create one. │ ├─◆ 5 ... FEDERAL LABOR RELATIONS AUTHORITY — EVERY SEAT FILLED, FUNCTION DEAD ◎ │ Seats .......... 3 ★, not more than 2 of one party, 5-year terms │ To act ......... no quorum number at all in 5 U.S.C. § 7104 § │ § 7104(d): "A vacancy in the Authority shall not │ impair the right of the remaining members to exercise │ all of the powers of the Authority." │ Status ........ all three seats filled. QUORUM INTACT AND IRRELEVANT. │ Delegation ..... ▣ the best-drafted architecture in this set, and it │ is statutory rather than discretionary. § 7105(e)(1) │ lets the Authority delegate to any regional director │ four enumerated functions — unit determinations, │ investigations and hearings, representation questions │ and directing elections, and conducting and │ certifying secret-ballot elections. § 7105(e)(2) lets │ it delegate unfair-labor-practice determinations │ under § 7118 to an administrative law judge. And │ § 7105(f) supplies automatic finality: a delegated │ action may be reviewed on application within 60 days, │ review is not a stay, and if the Authority does not │ act "the action shall become the action of the │ Authority at the end of such 60-day period." │ Freezes ....... ✕ THE ONE THING THAT WAS NEVER DELEGATED. Filing and │ prosecuting unfair-labor-practice complaints is │ reserved to the General Counsel — § 7104(f)(2)(A)-(B) │ with § 7118(a)(1) — a separate Senate-confirmed │ officer, removable by the President at any time. The │ post has been vacant since 20 January 2017. ◈ 9 years │ and 10 months, 3,582 days as of this page's date. The │ agency's own inspector general states the │ consequence: "if there is no GC or Acting GC, then │ the OGC cannot issue ULP complaints." Charges are │ received, investigated, and cannot be prosecuted. │ Remedy ........ ⊘ none. The inspector general reports that the │ recommendations waiting for action grow, and that │ "the older the case, the more potential liability │ increases for the Federal Government in the form of │ higher backpay and interest." │ ◈ Six nominations to the post expired without a Senate vote: 11 April │ 2019 · 12 February 2020 · 9 August 2021 · 4 January 2022 · 6 June │ 2023 · 8 January 2024. A seventh was pending in September 2025. │ ⚑ THE INVERSION. Vacancies do not impair this body by the express │ words of its statute; it can delegate to regional directors and to │ judges; and its central enforcement power has not worked in nine │ years, because that power was vested in one person and the statute │ gave it nowhere else to go. A quorum is not what makes a body work. │ └─◆ 6 ... PRIVACY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES OVERSIGHT BOARD — 653 DAYS ✕ Seats .......... 5 ★ To act ......... 3 members § 42 U.S.C. § 2000ee: "Three members of the Board shall constitute a quorum." No clause preserving the remaining members' powers was found in this survey. Status ........ 1 seated since 27 January 2025, when three members were removed on one day. ◈ 653 days as of this page's date — the longest live lapse on the page. Still one member in the most recent survey read, of 25 August 2026. Delegation ..... NONE found in this survey, and the same trap as the Commission in row 3: creating one would take three. Survives ...... staff continuing existing projects with limited supervision. A single member may issue a statement in her own name, which is not an act of the Board. Freezes ....... ✕ board reports · opening new projects · beginning investigations · the roles assigned to the Board by the 2022 executive order behind the EU-U.S. data transfer framework, including recommending judges to its review court. Remedy ........ partial, and stayed. Two removed members sued. On 21 May 2025 a district court held the removals unlawful and ordered reinstatement, finding that "lawmakers clearly intended to shield members of the five-person board from at-will removal by the president." The D.C. Circuit stayed reinstatement on 1 July 2025 and the appeal was still pending in April 2026. ⚑ AND THE SHARPEST FACT ON THIS PAGE. On 2 April 2026 a staff report supporting reauthorization of the surveillance authority this Board exists to oversee was released under the Board's name, carrying a disclaimer that it "has not been voted on or approved by a quorate Board." The oversight body's most consequential document of the cycle was issued by its staff, with no board behind it, weeks before that authority's stated 20 April 2026 sunset. ■ PART C — THE FOUR DEVICES THAT SURVIVE A QUORUM LOSS │ Every one of them has to be built while the body can still count to a │ quorum. ◎ THE ONE THING A QUORUM CANNOT DELEGATE IS THE POWER TO DELEGATE. │ A board that has already fallen short cannot vote itself a workaround, and │ that single fact explains most of Part B. │ ├─◆ i .... A DELEGATION POLICY THE BOARD ADOPTS ITSELF ▣ │ The Election Assistance Commission's 2024 Organizational Management │ Policy, adopted by the three-member approval its statute requires, │ two years before the seats emptied. The Equal Employment Opportunity │ Commission did the same thing in December 2024 — a limited standing │ delegation covering contracting approval, petitions to revoke or │ modify enforcement subpoenas, and ministerial regulation changes │ compelled by statute — and lost its quorum the following year. │ ⚑ A contingency delegation voted a month before the contingency. │ ├─◆ ii ... A STATUTORY DELEGATION TO SUBORDINATE DECIDERS ▣ │ Written by Congress, so the board cannot lose it. 5 U.S.C. │ § 7105(e)(1)-(2) at the Labor Relations Authority; the Mine Safety │ and Health Review Commission's power under 30 U.S.C. § 823 to │ delegate to groups of three or more members, with two a quorum of │ the group. Administrative judges deciding in the first instance at │ the Merit Systems Protection Board sit on the same footing. │ ├─◆ iii .. AUTOMATIC FINALITY ▣ │ The quietest device and the most effective, because it needs no │ decision at all. If the board does not review the subordinate's │ action in time, the action BECOMES the board's. 5 U.S.C. § 7105(f): │ 60 days. At the Merit Systems Protection Board an unappealed initial │ decision becomes the Board's final decision and is reviewable in │ court under 5 U.S.C. § 7703, and 5 C.F.R. § 1200.3(b) lets the │ chairman declare a decision final when two members cannot agree. │ ⚑ Note what this is: a release valve, not a cure. It gets a party │ out of the building. It does not get the question answered. │ └─◆ iv ... A DELEGATED GROUP OF MEMBERS ✕ The device that does not work, and the one boards reach for. Part A. It is sideways, not downward, so it fails at exactly the moment it was built for. ■ PART D — WHERE THE NUMBER IS WRITTEN, AND WHY THAT DECIDES EVERYTHING │ A survey of 28 multimember federal bodies published 25 August 2026 was │ read for this page. Sorting its rows by WHERE each quorum rule lives │ produces the cleanest pattern on this page. │ ├─◆ THE NUMBER IS IN THE ORGANIC STATUTE § │ Election Assistance Commission (3 of 4) · Federal Election │ Commission (4 votes) · Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board │ (3 of 5) · National Labor Relations Board (3 of 5) · National Science │ Foundation board (half the confirmed members plus one). │ ◎ Every body on this page that FROZE is on this list. The number is │ fixed, it does not fall when the seats do, and only Congress can │ change it. Four of the five were short of a quorum in that survey. │ ├─◆ THE NUMBER IS IN A RULE THE BODY WROTE ITSELF ☐ │ And where the body wrote it, it tends to have written a rule that │ heals: Securities and Exchange Commission, 17 C.F.R. § 200.41 — │ three, or the number in office if fewer, and two for some matters. │ Federal Trade Commission, 16 C.F.R. § 4.14 — a majority of those in │ office and not recused. Federal Reserve Board, by its own rules of │ organization — four, or all of them if three or fewer are in office. │ Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, by bylaw — a majority of │ members in office. Merit Systems Protection Board, 5 C.F.R. │ § 1200.3. Energy Regulatory Commission, 18 C.F.R. § 375. │ ⚑ "A majority of those in office" cannot be defeated by emptying │ seats. It is the same sentence as "there is no quorum problem." │ ├─◆ THE STATUTE SAYS VACANCIES DO NOT MATTER │ Seven of the 28 were quoted with a clause of that kind, among them │ the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — "A vacancy in the │ Commission shall not impair the right of the remaining │ Commissioners" — the Surface Transportation Board, the International │ Trade Commission ("may function notwithstanding vacancies"), the │ Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Maritime Commission, │ the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Postal Service │ board. Two of the 28 were reported as having no quorum requirement at │ all. ◈ One member can run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, │ and that is not an emergency, because its statute says so. │ └─◆ THE DISCREPANCY WORTH KNOWING ABOUT ◈ That survey's own table and its own body text disagree about two bodies: the table marks the Labor Relations Board and the Credit Union Administration as having a quorum while the text says neither does. A tracker maintained by hand will carry this kind of conflict, which is why every row of Part B above was taken from the agency's own statement or from the statute instead. [unconfirmed] as to the Credit Union Administration either way. ■ PART E — WHAT A QUORUM LOSS ACTUALLY DOES │ ├─◆ IT DOES NOT CLOSE THE BUILDING ⚑ │ Every body in Part B kept taking in work. Complaints were accepted, │ reports were reviewed, cases were docketed, grants were paid, machines │ were certified, charges were investigated. The agency with no members │ at all has the longest list of surviving functions on the page. │ ├─◆ IT DELETES THE LAYER THAT CHANGES THE RULES ◎ │ Put every frozen item from Part B in one column and they share a │ property: each one either writes a rule, changes a rule, or decides a │ contested case at the last instance. Put every surviving item in the │ other column and each one applies a rule already written. A quorum │ loss removes a body's legislative and appellate capacity and leaves │ its executive capacity running. The agency keeps doing. It stops │ deciding, and it stops changing its mind. │ ├─◆ SO THE EFFECT IS A FREEZE, NOT A SHUTDOWN ⚑ │ Whatever the rules said on the day the seats emptied is what they go │ on saying — enforced by staff, unreviewable by anyone inside the │ agency, and unamendable until the Senate acts. The policy in force │ becomes the policy that cannot be challenged within the agency. │ ◈ Against that: the Labor Relations Board's acting General Counsel │ rescinded 29 memoranda during the freeze, because prosecutorial │ direction was in the channel that stayed open. The freeze binds the │ deliberative layer, not the channel that was delegated downward. │ └─◆ AND THE PRIVATE PARTY'S POSITION IS WORSE THAN IT LOOKS Three remedies appear on this page and none of them reaches the merits. ⊘ A statutory suit can win a declaration and an order to conform, and the order runs to a body that needs four votes to obey it. ⊘ A removed member can win reinstatement and have it stayed on appeal. ◎ And the one route that works — letting an initial decision go final and taking it to a court of appeals — works by giving up the review the statute promised. The deadlines kept running throughout. Nothing was tolled because the deciders were gone. ``` ## Notes - **Why 2025 and 2026 produced six of these at once.** The removals behind five of the six rows were presidential, and the legal ground under them shifted in the middle. On 29 June 2026 the Supreme Court held in [[Trump v. Slaughter]] that the for-cause removal provision protecting Federal Trade Commission members is unconstitutional and overruled [[Humphrey's Executor v. United States]]. Ten days later the Election Assistance Commission's remaining three members were removed, and a White House official said the decision "gives the President precedence to do so." Whether it reaches a bipartisan election body of this kind was described by an election-law scholar at the time as "an open question" that "has not been tested." The removal question is mapped in [[Agency Head Removal Protections Crosswalk]]; this page starts the moment after it is answered, when the seat is empty and the body has to decide what it can still do. - **The agencies' own statements are the best source on this subject, and they disagree with the coverage.** News reporting in July 2026 said the Election Assistance Commission "cannot take official action" and "is unable to conduct official business." The Commission's own August 2026 statement sets out a long list of programs that "may proceed," voting-system testing and certification among them, "consistent with the delegations of authority." Both are true, of different things: an act of the *Commission* is frozen, and a delegated act of the *program* is not. Any account of a quorum loss that does not separate the two will be wrong about half of it. - **The 2024 policy instrument is the load-bearing document and its adoption date is what matters.** The Commission's statement names a 2024 Organizational Management Policy, which replaced a 2015 policy and a 2008 roles-and-responsibilities policy, and says delegations are made "through policy adopted by the approval of at least three members." The statement does not give the month of adoption. What is established is that it predates the April and July 2026 departures, which is the only thing the argument needs. - **Certification decisions themselves sit with an official, not with the commissioners.** A congressional research description of the testing programme reports that certification and decertification decisions are made by the executive director or a designee, subject to appeal to an appeal authority of two or more commissioners or commission appointees — a design that works with no commissioners for the decision and not for the appeal. That is a secondary characterisation of a programme manual; the manual was not read for this page. - **The Labor Relations Authority's General Counsel vacancy is the longest-running item on the page by an order of magnitude and the least discussed.** Nine years and ten months, six nominations expired without a floor vote, and an inspector general's finding that unfair-labor-practice charges are investigated and cannot be prosecuted. The [[Federal Vacancies Reform Act]] supplies the acting-officer mechanics, and the sources read here differ about which periods had an acting General Counsel: the agency's inspector general gives 20 January 2017 to 16 November 2017 and 23 March 2021 to 1 August 2023, while a secondary roster shows no acting officer between November 2017 and March 2021 and does not carry the 2023 end date. The disagreement is recorded rather than resolved. - **What a notice of removal has to do with any of this.** Nothing, and that is the point of reading the two crosswalks together. A statute can protect an officer's tenure, require an announcement of the removal, or say nothing; none of those provisions has any bearing on whether the body can act once the officer is gone. The two questions are answered by different sentences of the same statute, and a body can be strong on one and defenceless on the other. The Labor Relations Authority is the clearest case: removal of its members requires "notice and hearing" and cause, its statute says vacancies do not impair it, and its enforcement power has not worked since 2017. - **The Merit Systems Protection Board's remedy is worth a reader's attention beyond this page.** A federal employee who loses before an administrative judge and does not appeal gets a final decision and a court; an employee who appeals gets a petition nobody can decide. During the 2025 lapse the agency published this openly, together with the fact that the 35-day filing deadline was not tolled. The asymmetry runs one way: the employing agency has no equivalent route, because an initial decision it dislikes only becomes final if it declines to challenge it. The channels around this are mapped in [[Federal Whistleblower Protection Crosswalk]]. - **On the 28-body survey used for Part D.** It is a coalition's tracker, last updated 25 August 2026, and its status calls are its own. It was used here for two things only: which statutes were quoted as carrying a vacancy clause, and where each quorum number is written. Several of its citations are loose — a statute labelled as a regulation, two agencies sharing one citation that can only belong to one of them, sections omitted — and its table contradicts its text on two bodies. Nothing in Part B rests on it. - **What the 2010 decision does and does not settle.** It settles that a delegee group of members must keep three, and it preserves by footnote the Board's earlier delegations to non-members. It does not say what happens to a delegation made to staff by a body whose own statute, unlike the Labor Relations Authority's, contains no delegation provision at all — which is the Election Assistance Commission's position, resting on a policy rather than on a statutory grant. No court has tested that, so far as this survey established. - **Dates, and why some of them are soft.** The removals, the swearing-in dates and the statutory text are firm. Three items are not: whether the Federal Election Commission's nominees have had their hearing, which was reported as scheduled a day before this page was written; whether the appeal from the May 2025 reinstatement order has been decided, last confirmed pending in April 2026; and whether the Election Assistance Commission has had any nomination since July 2026, which no source found here reports. All three will move, and the arithmetic in Part B is keyed to 11 November 2026. - **No officeholder is named inside the chart.** Every row is a statute, a policy instrument, a court date or an arithmetic total. The seats on this page turned over hard, and a chart built on incumbents would be out of date before a reader reached the bottom of it. - **What was deliberately not asserted.** No count of pending enforcement matters at the Federal Election Commission, no count of backlogged unfair-labor-practice charges at the Labor Relations Authority, and no dollar figure for accrued back pay: no public source found in this survey gives any of the three. No claim that the Election Assistance Commission's surviving programmes are lawful, only that the agency says they are proceeding and names its basis. No statutory text for the Oversight Board's quorum beyond the sentence quoted, which came from a secondary compilation rather than from the Code. - **Questions left open.** Whether any party has standing to challenge a delegated act taken by a body with no members, and in which court. Whether the Oversight Board's single remaining member could lawfully have authorised the staff report issued under the Board's name in April 2026, which no source consulted here addresses. Whether the Election Assistance Commission's appeal authority can be constituted from "commission appointees" when there are no commissioners to appoint them. And the one worth watching soonest: whether the Federal Election Commission, if it regains four members, treats the 26 June 2025 conformance order as still live, because a stay sought "until such time that the Commission regains a quorum" has an end date now in view. - **Symbol note.** `▣` is new to this series and marks a function that continued through a quorum loss under a delegation made beforehand; it is used fourteen times. `§` is re-pointed here to mean that the rule is in the organic statute and the body cannot change it, with `☐` as its counterpart for a rule the body wrote itself — the pair is the finding of Part D rather than decoration. `✕`, `◎`, `⊘`, `⚑`, `◈` and `★` carry the meanings established in earlier maps in this series. ## See also - [[Agency Head Removal Protections Crosswalk]] · [[Removal Power]] · [[Delegation of Authority]] · [[Provisional Quorum]] · [[Appointments Clause]] - [[New Process Steel v. NLRB]] · [[Trump v. Slaughter]] · [[Humphrey's Executor v. United States]] · [[Trump v. Wilcox]] · [[Unitary Executive Theory]] - [[Election Assistance Commission]] · [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] · [[Federal Election Commission]] · [[NLRB]] · [[Federal Labor Relations Authority]] · [[Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board]] · [[EEOC]] · [[CFTC]] · [[Office of Special Counsel]] - [[Help America Vote Act]] · [[Federal Vacancies Reform Act]] · [[Voluntary Voting System Guidelines]] · [[FISA Section 702]] - [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] · [[Federal Whistleblower Protection Crosswalk]] · [[Statistical Officials Crosswalk]] - [[Federal Agencies Hub]] · [[Foundations Hub]] · [[2026 Midterms Hub]]