Politics & Power Quote by DeForest Soaries

“Major, unprecedented commitment” is the kind of phrase that tries to pre-write history while it’s still being negotiated. DeForest Soaries is talking about the Election Assistance Commission, born from the wreckage of the 2000 presidential election and the ensuing panic over hanging chads, broken machines, and a public newly aware that “the vote” is also an infrastructure problem. In that moment, even modest administrative reform had to be sold as democratic renewal, not bureaucratic repair.

The intent is clear: legitimize a new federal body by wrapping it in the biggest American civic nouns available - freedom, democracy, vibrancy. Those words aren’t accidental. They elevate what could sound like technocratic housekeeping (standards, funding, guidance) into a moral project, implying that better administration equals more liberty. It’s a savvy move in a political culture suspicious of Washington: if the EAC is about “freedom,” resisting it starts to look unpatriotic rather than merely skeptical.

The subtext is ambition dressed as humility. “Humbled by the prospect” performs public service ethos while quietly signaling status: being a “charter member” isn’t just participation; it’s authorship. He’s positioning himself as a founding figure in the post-2000 era of election governance, staking a claim to credibility before the inevitable controversies arrive.

There’s also a defensive note embedded in the optimism: a promise that federal involvement can be “sustained” without becoming coercive. That tension - between national standards and local control - is the quiet conflict this sentence tries to smooth over with uplift.