I watched a commentary today on a bit of a controversy involving the DOJ, the DOD, and the administration regarding processing absentee ballots for those serving in the military overseas. Apparently, for the 2008 presidential election, somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,000 military ballots didn't get processed in time to be counted in election results [that number limited to data from ballots sent to troops in Iraq and Afganistan, as per the commentary]. There was a law passed in 2009 called the MOVE Act that was intended to fix this issue, allowing the states one year to make whatever changes were necessary to prevent this from happening again. The controversy comes into play because some states have not implemented the necessary changes, and the DOJ is implicated in two areas; 1) The DOJ is supposed to operate in an advise and assist mode for the states in this matter, taking proposed changes and tuning them to be most effective in application under the law, and; 2) Filing suits against states that have not taken appropriate or timely action. The DOJ is doing neither. States not [yet] in compliance include Wisconsin, Colorado, Hawaii, and Alaska. In addition, states can apply for temporary exemption from DOJ prosecution, but only with the approval of the DOD, which has accepted exemption requests from Massachusetts, New York, Delaware, and Washington. In both the cases of DOJ inaction and DOD exemption, the administration could step in to hold feet to the fire as the entity with overarching jurisdiction over both bureaucracies, but it hasn't. Of course I wanted to bring this issue to light for discussion, but I'm also curious as to whether it's possible to "fast track" a solution. I realize that ballots are complex and the process for completing and processing them convoluted, but is there a way for a soldier to parse out only what is important to them and issue some kind of makeshift ballot? Do laws require that votes be cast on official documents through official channels, or is there maybe a way for a military "notary" to certify a makeshift ballot as officially representative of a soldier's vote? I suppose even with that type of a solution, a state clerk would be within their jurisdiction to reject the ballot altogether. It just frustrates me that priority isn't given to those votes coming from people willing to die to protect the right to vote at all.
Easy solution: look at the military payroll. Based on the final count, automatically issue 75% of the vote to Republicans and 25% to the Dems.
