It would be hard to imagine a group of Americans whose right to vote deserves higher protection than our men and women in uniform. But often, through no fault of their own, they are denied their voting rights.
A 2009 federal law required that absentee ballots be mailed at least 45 days before an election to military voters who requested the ballots. That is important, particularly for U.S. troops who are in overseas war zones where mail can frequently be delayed.
But a study of two dozen states last year by the Military Voter Protection Project found that in most of the states, at least some county election officials were not complying with the new rule.
Nearly 16 percent of the almost 2 million members of the military accounted for in the voting-rights study requested absentee ballots for the 2010 midterm elections. And yet only 4.6 percent ultimately cast ballots that were actually counted alongside the votes of other Americans. That was down from the 5.5 percent whose ballots were counted in the 2006 midterms.
In one especially troubling case, St. Clair County in Illinois mailed 1,000 military voters their absentee ballots only about two weeks before the ballots were due back in the United States. That was "insufficient time for the ballots to even arrive at their locations overseas," noted Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission. There were similar delays in ballots sent by more than a dozen counties in New York state.
The study also found that in a number of instances, the U.S. Department of Justice did not act in a timely manner to protect military voters in the 2010 midterms.
Ironically, in more recent months, the Obama Justice Department has wrongly focused on preventing states from enforcing valid photo ID requirements of stateside civilian voters -- requirements that can prevent fraud and that have rarely been found to disenfranchise legitimate voters.
That tells us a great deal about the administration's misguided priorities.