The watchdog group Military Voter Protection Project reports that the number of 2012 absentee ballot requests by military voters has dropped dramatically since the 2008 election.
Several crucial swing states with large military populations have seen particularly dramatic reductions in requests – Virginia and Ohio ballot requests are both down 70 percent from 2008 and Florida has seen a 46 percent reduction. And thanks to our Pentagon and Department of Justice, our federal government could have a hand in this sad reality.
A recent Department of Defense Inspector General report concluded that the Pentagon may not have been taking the actions required to implement the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. For example, investigators found that they could only contact about 50 percent of the required voting-assistance offices at each military installation. These voting offices are supposed to offer voter registration documents to service-members when they check-in to a new duty station in much the same way that state governments are required to allow voter registration at the DMV.
In 2010, two Department of Justice whistleblowers within the DOJ’s voting-rights section accused the Obama administration of intentionally stalling in-state enforcement of the MOVE Act, potentially resulting in thousands of ballots reaching service-members too late for their votes to be counted. Additionally, critics alleged that while the DOJ website had an entire section devoted to felons looking to recover their voting rights, there was no current information for military and overseas voters.
Interestingly, while any allegation of potential voter disenfranchisement caused by voter ID laws sends Democrats and the media into a fury, Attorney General Eric Holder and other supposed voting-rights champions have remained largely silent in the face of hard data that may indicate wide-spread disenfranchisement of our military.
One cynical and partisan explanation for this inconsistency: members of the military are considered by most to be a traditionally conservative voting bloc, while Americans without photo IDs tend to fall into Democratic-leaning demographic groups.
All Americans deserve to have their votes counted in an election; however, the burden of acquiring a free voter ID from the DMV does not compare to the voting burdens faced by many soldiers serving overseas. I would hope that Eric Holder and other liberals would address potential military disenfranchisement with the same zeal that they currently reserve for criticizing voter ID laws… but I won’t hold my breath.
