Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama are among 16 states singled out by voting rights advocates for not allowing their deployed military voters enough time to cast ballots from overseas.

“States should send ballots out sooner. States should send ballots out faster. And states should be more flexible about when ballots are returned,” said Kil Huh, research director for the nonpartisan, Washington, D.C.-based research organization Pew Center for the States.

The center on Tuesday released a study titled “No Time to Vote: Challenges Facing America’s Overseas Military Voters.” The study concluded that a total of 25 states plus the District of Columbia should improve their absentee balloting for overseas military voters — but especially those 16 whose tight deadlines might make it impossible for some voters to return ballots in time to be counted in an election.

Because the process varies so much from state to state, the time it takes from sending a voter registration form to having a ballot received and counted can vary from eight days to 88 days, Mr. Huh said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters from across the nation.

In Georgia and Alabama cases, allowing 23 extra days between ballot mailing and receipt would ensure that most military voters could participate in the election, according to the study. For Tennessee, it would take at least 15 extra days.

The study’s authors call for action from state legislatures, which they say could create several helpful laws to expand the use of the Federal Write-in Absentee ballot as a backup measure; allow election materials to be transmitted electronically; allow a minimum of 45 days transit time for ballots; and eliminate a requirement in some states to have ballots notarized.

But the study’s recommendations were deemed overzealous by some election officials. Matt Carrothers, spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, said the study’s results should be discounted completely because they are based on old data from 2006.

"Since then, he said, Secretary Handel successfully has pushed a new law to allow blank ballot request forms to be e-mailed from overseas posts back to local election officials.

“The findings in this study are erroneous, at this point, and based on old data from a prior administration,” he said.

Tennessee Election Coordinator Brook Thompson was in a meeting all day Tuesday and unavailable for comment, according to his assistant. But he told the Times Free Press in a previous interview that a 45-day window and federal write-in ballots would have to suffice in Tennessee until technological innovation could allow for privacy protection in electronic transmission.

“I think we need to explore ways to do things to make it easier for people to vote, especially those overseas,” Mr. Thompson said. “But when you start allowing people to e-mail their votes back and forth, it compromises the security of the ballot.”

Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman did not respond to a call for comment before press time Tuesday. A spokeswoman in her office noted that she has made overseas voting a priority and is studying various potential improvements in her state.

There is not yet data to show the precise impact on military voters in November’s presidential contest, according to Mr. Huh, but the 2006 data shows it must have been difficult. Certainly there were military voters who were able to navigate the process in problem states, he said, but those voters clearly “voted in spite of the laws, and not because of them.”

Marine Maj. Alan Miller, who commanded the Chattanooga-based Mike Battery reserve unit during a seven-month deployment last year, said he thinks the individual initiative to vote always will prove to be the driving force in overseas voting — whether or not there is any reform to voting laws.

Knowing that the battery would be deployed on Election Day, Maj. Miller began organizing voting efforts in January 2008. Ballots were received in Iraq by early October and had to be in the mail by mid-month, giving Marines from various states who wanted to vote plenty of time to do so, according to the major.

Those who didn’t vote probably wouldn’t have done so regardless of deployment status, he said.

“The individual has to do their part,” Maj. Miller said. “It’s the same as here (in Chattanooga). You have to register to vote, and then you actually have to go out and cast your ballot.”

Tech Talk