As most Americans discovered during the 2000 election, military voters face significant hurdles when voting because of the transitory nature of military life and the delays associated with delivering absentee ballots, especially to war zones. These problems only have increased as America sends hundreds of thousands of military members to Iraq and Afghanistan. While nearly every military voting exp
ert in the United States agrees that absentee ballots must be sent to overseas military voters at least 45 days before an election, many states continuously fail to meet this requirement. In some cases, states have refused to amend their state laws to provide military members with sufficient time to vote. In other cases, states have failed to ensure that counties mailed their ballots in a timely manner. The devastating effect of these failures was evident in the 2008 election. Thousands of military voters had their voices silenced when their absentee ballots were sent to wrong addresses, lost in the mail, or mailed too close to the election for the ballot to be returned. Thousands more were disenfranchised when their absentee ballot—through no fault of the military voter—arrived after the election deadline. To make matters worse, the primary entity responsible for protecting military voters, the Voting Section of the Department of Justice, decided not to pursue these states. The Department stood by as thousands of military voters had their votes rejected by state and county officials. Had the Department enforced a 45-day standard for mail delivery, most of these votes would have been counted in the historic 2008 presidential election. The MOVE Act
Given the widespread failure in 2008, Congress moved quickly in 2009 to pass the most significant military voter reform in 25 years. At its core, the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE Act) addresses the lack of time issue by requiring states to: (1) mail absentee ballots at least 45 days before an election and (2) use electronic delivery mechanisms to expedite the delivery of absentee ballots to military members. The MOVE Act also required numerous improvements to the military voter registration process and required the United States Postal Service to use express mail delivery for absentee ballots returning from an overseas location. Unfortunately, with less than 75 days before the November 2010 election, more than one dozen states have failed to implement one or more of the key provisions of the MOVE Act. These states are once again trying to silence the voices of our men and women in uniform.
