Texas Senator John Cornyn

Texas Senator John Cornyn is accusing the Department of Defense of standing:

 "...in clear violation of a central provision of... federal law, which mandated the creation of on-base voter assistance offices.  The price of DoD’s failure to follow the law will likely be paid this November by military service members and their families, whose voting rights were to have been safeguarded by this provision..."

Senator Cornyn asks Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, in a letter to him this week, for his "...personal involvement to see that it is corrected..."

Cornyn cites a key provision of the law, the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE):

"...This key provision of the MOVE Act, codified at 10 USC § 1566a, required DoD to create voter assistance offices on every military installation, wherein military service members and their families could receive voter assistance during key transition periods, such as upon arriving at a new duty station or when deploying overseas.  If properly implemented, this assistance program would have afforded these military voters the same type and level of voter assistance provided to civilians at their local driver’s license branches or social service offices.  This voter assistance provision was important to Senators on both sides of the aisle.  For too long, DoD and its Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) had failed to provide consistent and meaningful voter assistance to ensure that our men and women in uniform were able to vote..."

Cornyn then admonishes the Department of Defense for ignoring the law:

"...DoD’s implementation of the on-base voter assistance program has been at best a hollow exercise.  Initially, DoD completely ignored the statutory 2010 deadline for implementation.  Then, when DoD eventually began to stand up some of these offices on installations, they located many of them in places that can be hard to find or else play no role in administrative in-processing or out-processing for deployment (e.g., the base library or chapel).  As such, most newly assigned military service members and also deploying service members have no meaningful opportunity to receive the necessary voter assistance during these key transition periods, which was what Congress clearly intended..."

Cornyn's letter to Panetta, which has also been signed by U.S. Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, John Barrasso, R-WY, Richard Burr, R-NC, Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, and James Inhofe, R-OK, says that:

"...many of the on-base voter assistance offices that do exist are grossly inadequate, and at least half of them are either closed or completely unstaffed.  This fact was recently documented by the DoD Inspector General (IG), who concluded that DoD has not established all the assistance offices that Congress intended.  In its August 31, 2012 report, the DoD IG stated: 'Results were clear.  Our attempts to contact IVAOs [Installation Voting Assistance Offices] failed about 50 percent of the time'...”  

The letter cites Department of defense excuses, as to why the law cannot be implemented as issued, and refutes those claims as disingenuous:

"...DoD claims that the funding necessary to implement this on-base voter assistance program has simply been unavailable.  This claim is disingenuous.  DoD has never asked Congress for this funding, as evidenced by DoD’s own budget requests for FVAP for the three fiscal years following enactment of the MOVE Act (FY11 through FY13).  In those years, the budget request for FVAP averaged more than $30 million per year, including over $46 million for FY11, though none of that funding was intended for the on-base voter assistance program.  It is sometimes said that the budget is policy and, here, it appears that DoD’s policy was to disregard the clear will of Congress..."

Just last Wednesday, Acting Director for the Federal Voting Assistance Program, Pam Mitchell, said that:

"...absentee military and overseas citizen voters can enjoy a streamlined process to register, obtain a ballot and exercise their right to vote..."

In a Department of Defense Statement from a Pentagon Press Conference, Mitchell said:

"...We firmly believe that voting assistance for our absentee voters is absolutely the best that it’s ever been,” Mitchell said. “There are a lot of tools in our arsenal to help those voters both register, get an absentee ballot and to exercise their right to vote...”

Mitchell explained that

"...FVAP offers a variety of tools through its 'online wizard,' which among other features, can even help users ready ballot envelopes for posting by printing the correct address on them.  FVAP has customized its tools...focusing on the 18-to-25-year-old demographic, given their familiarity and general preference for gleaning information from the Internet and communicating through social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn...We have a mobile website we just unveiled last week so that using a smartphone or a tablet from anywhere you may be, you can obtain access to our information and our tools..."

The Department of Defense statement reminded us that in January Mitchell said that officials also took to email accounts to broaden outreach:

“...We use email blasts to every member within a dot-mil email address to remind them how they can register to vote and that it’s time to vote...Outside of the electronic domain, FVAP maintains a call center that operates five days a week from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. EDT and can be used by voters worldwide to get help on how to file an absentee ballot...For in-person interaction...voting assistance officers and installation voter assistance offices remain available as prescribed by the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act..."

The statement said Mitchell acknowledged findings in a recently released DOD Inspector General report that indicated difficulties in reaching a number of IVA offices based on dated contact information. Saying that things change in a military environment, and that due to joint basing factors:

"...We … agree with the IG that the most important thing we can do is to find the most effective way to maintain assistance for all of our absentee voters, and we are absolutely committed [to that].” In the IG report, FVAP officials said investing in intuitive, easy-to-use Web-based tools, supplemented by well-trained unit voting assistance officers -- rather than installation voter assistance offices -- could substantially reduce cost and improve voting assistance...By law, all states must offer electronic delivery of the ballot, but the voter, when applying for the ballot, can elect to receive it that way or may elect to receive it in the mail...Over the last six months, we spent a lot of time reaching out to every single one of the 221 installation voting offices. We’re confident that the information on our website today is accurate and has the most up-to-date contact [information]...Between now and the election,  FVAP officials will continue to make weekly calls to each of the installation voter assistance offices to ensure they are accurately able to capture changes that may occur...Our goal is to make sure that anyone who wants to vote has the resources and tools they need from anywhere in the world to successfully exercise that right..."

But Cornyn stresses that there is no excuse for the failure of the program:

"...There is no excuse for DoD ignoring the clear intent of Congress that these voter assistance offices be established and operated on every military installation.  The MOVE Act was not optional, and neither is our moral duty to protect the civil rights of our men and women in uniform and their families.  They make tremendous sacrifices in the defense of our nation, but those sacrifices do not and should not include their right to vote..."

Cornyn wants action to remedy this now before the November elections and tells the Defense Secretary:

"...The time to act is now.  DoD must take immediate action to ensure our military service members and their families have an opportunity to vote in the November election.  At the very least, DoD needs to provide every military voter with a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) and the necessary assistance to complete that form, which can be used to register to vote, update an existing registration, and request an absentee ballot.  DoD should also keep track, consistent with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, of the number of FPCAs that were processed and sent to local election jurisdictions, as well as the number of military voters who were offered assistance but declined it.  Finally, DoD must undertake significant efforts at all levels to promote and encourage military voter participation in the November election..."

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