Absentee voting fix not enough, advocates say - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Absentee voting fix not enough, advocates say

A bill that seeks to improve the absentee voting process for overseas military members has passed the House Administration Committee, but advocates for military and overseas voters say it falls short of providing the comprehensive fix that is needed.

The Military Voting Protection Act, HR 2393, addresses ballots of overseas military members. It would set up an express mail collection system for the last leg of a ballot’s journey, from the voter back to the state election official. It also would set up a tracking system that would allow service members to find out whether their ballot had been delivered to their state’s election officials.

“We are now one step closer to ensuring that the votes of our troops serving abroad will be counted,” said Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in a statement after the committee passed the bill, which he reintroduced in May.

“I hope this doesn’t affect in any way the possibility of more comprehensive action,” said Warren Stewart, legislative policy director for Verified Voting, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works for reliability and publicly verifiable voting.

The bill, which now goes to the full House for consideration, would require the Federal Voting Assistance Program to set a deadline for receiving absentee ballots of noon on the fourth day before federal elections, beginning with the November 2010 elections. If necessary to ensure timely delivery, the deadline could be set earlier.

FVAP officials would be responsible for collecting the ballots and using express mail delivery service to get them to the states. The bill specifies that the U.S. Postal Service must be used for express mail.

The bill also would require FVAP to submit a report to Congress within 180 days of each general election on the effectiveness of the collection and delivery system.

There are many steps in the absentee ballot voting process, and shipping the ballot back is only the last step, said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president of the Overseas Vote Foundation.

“The irresistible urge to focus on the last step of the process, the step that is held hostage by all others that precede it, is an unfortunate distraction if it is the only measure taken in the face of other very real remaining challenges,” she said. “Speeding the return of the voted ballot won’t help much if the voter’s request for the ballot is late and if is/her ballot does not show up in time to be cast.”

The bill is one of several pending legislative initiatives that together indicate that military and overseas voting issues have not lost momentum even though the nation is now between election years, Dzieduszycka-Suinat said.

HR 2393 “is certainly a step in the right direction,” she said. “However, it lacks a comprehensive approach and could serve to distract people from other fundamental changes that are needed” in overseas and military voting laws.

“Without an in-depth study of the problem, it advocates creation of a new postal infrastructure within DoD rather than improving the one that is in place, something that is therefore hard to judge as the right approach from a standpoint of cost and resource effectiveness,” she said.

She noted that the Military Postal Service implemented a ballot return tracking mechanism for the ballots they have shipped in 2008. MPS also provided express mail service for absentee ballots.

Overseas Vote Foundation, in conjunction with FedEx, also offered a separate express ballot return service, with discounted rates for military and overseas voters.