Huge Plunge in Military Absentee Ballot Requests Worries GOP

The military is seeing a huge drop in absentee ballot requests by service members, according to VirginiaWatchdog.org, a situation which is being called a “national disgrace.”

Eric Eversole executive director of the Project, told Virginia Watchdog despite the implementation of the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act in 2009, which was supposed to help military voters obtain absentee ballots, the system isn’t working. Service members simply aren’t getting the same level of voter assistance that civilians receive, he said.

The Military Voter Protection Project found that military families from the states of Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, Alaska, Colorado and Nevada have requested 55,510 absentee ballots so far this year, which is down sharply from the 166,252 sought in those states in 2008.

In Virginia, there has been a 92 percent drop in ballot requests.

“The fact is that an incredibly small percentage of military voters are requesting absentee ballots for the 2012 election, even though a majority of military members — roughly two-thirds — will need to vote by absentee ballot,” Eversole told Virginia Watchdog.

“We’re not seeing the same level of emphasis [on military voting] that we saw four years ago,” he said.

“The military is one of the most underrepresented groups in the country. It doesn’t seem like correcting this problem has been a priority for this administration,” Robert Alt, director of the rule of law program at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said. He called the situation “a national disgrace.”