Congress passed the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment, or MOVE, Act in 2009, to make it easier for military personnel and their families to exercise the franchise they risk their lives to defend. Unfortunately, an Aug. 31 Department of Defense inspector general’s report shows that the Pentagon has failed to implement this law. The IG found that fewer than half of U.S. military bases set up MOVE-mandated voting assistance offices where military personnel could get the same assistance registering to vote and requesting absentee ballots as their civilian counterparts at “motor voter” locations stateside.

Pam Mitchell, interim director of the Pentagon’s Federal Voting Assistance Program, claimed the IG inspectors had been using “outdated” contact information and that DOD’s voter assistance is “the best that it’s ever been.” But in its survey of states with large military populations, the Military Voter Protection Project sided with the IG. The no-profit reported a 92 percent drop in absentee ballot requests by service members in Virginia so far this year, with the same pattern repeated in other states. If the Pentagon was really implementing MOVE, those numbers would be going up, not plunging.