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Bill aims to improve absentee ballot delivery

A California congressman wants to ensure every military vote counts in the November elections by having couriers — not the U.S. Postal Service — deliver completed absentee ballots from deployed service members to state election officials.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is looking for a way to overcome one of the biggest voting obstacles for service members based or deployed overseas — getting a ballot far enough in advance that a service member has time to complete it and send it back to state election officials in time to be counted.

McCarthy calls his bill, HR 5673, the Military Voting Protection Act, and says he is just trying to apply a “common-sense solution” so that service members are not denied the chance to have their vote count through no fault of their own.

“We can and we must work to protect the votes of our troops serving abroad and ensure they are counted,” said McCarthy, the ranking Republican on the House Administration Committee’s elections panel, to which his bill was referred.

Chief cosponsors include Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., and Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., who are also members of the elections subcommittee.

The bill assumes the new rules would apply to the November elections.

McCarthy said his bill attempts to address problems such as those cited in a 2007 report by the Election Assistance Commission on service members’ use of absentee ballots by in the 2006 election.

The report found that only 47.6 percent of absentee ballots requested by members of the military ended up being counted, and that some of the problem appeared to stem from mail delays. Ten percent of ballots arrived too late to be counted under deadlines applied by states, which usually are a combination of the date the ballot is postmarked and the absolute last day for ballots to be counted before election results are certified.

McCarthy said late ballots are not the fault of service members, who have no control over where they are assigned overseas or how long the mail might take to get back to the U.S.

His bill would have the Defense Department assign people to collect completed ballots and ensure they are delivered to state election officials before polls close. This could be done by military personnel or by contractors. The bill also calls for setting up a process to track progress of the packages of ballots, similar to the way major commercial shipping companies track packages.