Absentee voting issues still irk troops - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Absentee voting issues still irk troops

WASHINGTON — About one-third of overseas troops who wanted to vote in 2010 couldn’t, according to testimony at a House hearing Tuesday.

For tens of thousands of other overseas service members, absentee voting improved, thanks to a 2009 law requiring that absentee ballots be mailed 45 days before an election, Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, told the House Administration Committee.

But more than a dozen states and territories had trouble mailing absentee ballots to service members after holding late primaries.

Overseas troops who said they never voted in last year’s election cited difficulties receiving or returning their absentee ballots, according to a review by the Overseas Vote Foundation. The problem was worse in 2008, when about half of overseas troops reported problems, according to the panel’s chairman, Rep. Daniel Lungren, R-Calif.

“It is not good enough,” Lungren said. “We must do better.”

Delays in mailing absentee ballots to voters also affect civilians voting abroad, but lawmakers typically focus on troops because they’re serving to defend American citizens’ right to vote.

Ninety percent of civilians who vote by absentee ballot in the U.S. return those ballots, but only two-thirds of military and civilian overseas voters do, according to Rick Jones, co-chairman of the Alliance for Military and Overseas Voting Rights. Jones said 370,000 military voters “may face real problems” with mail delivery and other issues.

Local election officials urged lawmakers to consider allowing electronic voting for troops stationed abroad. States can send absentee ballots to voters overseas via e-mail or fax, but the voters usually can’t return the ballots using either method because of security concerns.

In one example, Florida allows absentee voters to return ballots by fax but not by e-mail. Escambia County Elections Supervisor David Stafford said troops usually aren’t happy that e-mail isn’t an option.

“While facsimile return is an allowable option in Florida, it is a dying technology and is difficult for many overseas voters to access,” said Stafford, whose county is home to 17,000 military and overseas voters, as well as the Blue Angels.

Lawmakers at Tuesday’s hearing sympathized with arguments in favor of absentee voting by e-mail. But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said e-mail technology isn’t secure, as demonstrated by hackers who breached the District of Columbia’s online voting system in October, after city officials invited them to test the system.

“I don’t think the security is available for that,” Lofgren said of e-mail voting.

Bradley King, co-director of the Indiana secretary of state’s election division, told lawmakers that two rural counties — Fountain and Huntington — mailed out seven ballots a little late last year because of staffing problems.

But he said he’s more concerned that 47 absentee ballots for overseas voters were mailed late from St. Joseph County, home of Notre Dame University. All 47 were returned by Oct. 14, in time to be counted, he said.

“Notwithstanding the fact that no military and overseas voters were disenfranchised as a result, the reasons for the delay are troubling,” King said.

Under the 2009 law, absentee ballots for the Nov. 2 election had to be mailed by Sept. 18. Perez said local election officials tried to compensate for delays in mailing the ballots by extending deadlines for when they would be accepted and counted.

Based largely on “egregious” problems in New York and Illinois, more than 45,000 military and civilian overseas ballots nationwide were mailed late, according to Eric Eversole, executive director of the Military Voter Protection Project.

In New York, which held a Sept. 14 primary, several counties and New York City boroughs sent out ballots Oct. 5 or later, Eversole said. Many other New York counties also missed the Oct. 1 mailing deadline that was part of an agreement with the Justice Department. To compensate, ballots were counted until Nov. 24, Perez said.

In Illinois, which held a February primary, 35 counties missed the deadline to mail absentee ballots, Eversole said. Vote-counting was extended to Nov. 16 for six counties, under an agreement with the Justice Department.

“As a result of the department’s actions, thousands of military and overseas voters had a reasonable opportunity to cast their ballots this year despite the failure of some election officials to timely send their ballots,” Perez said.

The Justice Department negotiated out-of-court agreements last year with four states that missed the Sept. 18 deadline for mailing absentee ballots to military service members. As a result of those agreements:

• Seven counties in Kansas agreed to delay counting ballots the same length of time that ballots were late in being mailed.

• Twenty-two counties in Mississippi counted ballots until Nov. 8.

• Elko County, Nev., sent ballots by e-mail or expedited mail, then counted ballots until Nov. 8.

• Thirteen counties in North Dakota counted votes until Nov. 8.

The Justice Department also reached agreements with other jurisdictions that had sought Pentagon exemptions to the mailing deadline and were rejected. Those agreements affected:

• Wisconsin, which held a Sept. 14 primary. Justice officials sued to force an agreement that ballots be mailed by Oct. 1 and not counted until Nov. 19.

• The District of Columbia, which also held a Sept. 14 primary. D.C. officials agreed to mail absentee ballots by Oct. 4 and wait to count them until Nov. 19. The District has since decided to hold an August primary in 2012.

• Hawaii, which held a Sept. 18 primary. State officials agreed to send and receive absentee ballots by express mail at no cost to voters. Ballots went out by Sept. 24. Hawaii also decided to move up its primary to August.

• Alaska, with an Aug. 24 primary; Colorado, with an Aug. 10 primary; and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with an uncontested Sept. 11 primary. All three ultimately agreed to meet the Sept. 18 deadline.