May 13 2010
That Didn’t Take Long
I’ve written before about the MOVE Act, federal legislation that attempts to facilitate voting by overseas and military voters. At the time I wrote about it, I noted something interesting.
One change is the effective period for a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA). Before this law passed, a person who submits an FPCA is applying for a ballot for the next two federal election years. So an application in 2005 would have entitled a person to a ballot for the 2006 and 2008 federal elections. The new law changes that to a single year. Now, military and overseas voters will have to submit a new application each and every year that they want to vote.
I noted how this flew in the face of other efforts to sign up people without their knowledge or consent.
At the time, I understood that this would mean that fewer military people would be signed up. Common sense tells us that if you require people to sign up every year instead of every four years, you’re going to see a drop off.
Now, we receive word from the folks who oversee the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act that they are concerned about the drop in the number of people receiving ballots. Here is the email that was sent to state officials.
Director Carey is concerned that the repeal of Section 104 of UOCAVA is having a negative impact on the total number of UOCAVA citizens with active ballot requests on file. To address this issue, we are asking for your data. Specifically, we are asking for the number of active ballot requests from UOCAVA citizens as of April 30, 2010, as well as the same information from April 30, 2008. If you have this information broken down to include the number of uniformed service voters and overseas citizen voters, please let us know.
I’ll give Director Carey the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knew this would be the outcome of the law but couldn’t stop it. But I’m curious as to whether a rewrite will be in the works for this totally predictable but apparently unexpected outcome.
Thank you, Mr. Sheldon, for giving me the benefit of the doubt, and not just assuming I’m a complete idiot for asking this question of election officials. Sometimes the stilted language that insinuates itself into government correspondence in order to soften the request being made, makes us look…clueless. I assure you, that was not the intent.
The Department of Defense did oppose repealing Sections 104(a) to (d) of UOCAVA, but mostly on the concern that there would be no way for UOCAVA voters to receive timely ballots for special elections. What was raised to us as the rationale for this repeal was the apparent high number of ballots being returned to election officials as undeliverable.
From the EAC’s post-2008 election survey, the States said they received about 18,000 of the ballots sent to military and overseas voters back as undeliverable, out of about one million transmitted to military and overseas voters (1.9% undeliverable rate). And EAC’s data showed the undeliverable rate for automatically transmitted absentee ballots was 2.4%, higher than the overall military and overseas ballot undeliverable rate, but still pretty low overall.
On the other hand, 231,324 absentee ballots were transmitted automatically to military and overseas voters because of prior absentee ballot request, and 150,143 of those (or 64.9%) were returned by the voter. Conversely, 757,883 absentee ballots were transmitted by election officials due to a specific military or overseas voter absentee ballot request for the 2008 election cycle, and 532,198 of those specifically requested absentee ballots (or 70.2%) were returned by the voter.
So yes, specifically requested absentee ballots went cast by the voter at a higher rate than those automatically transmitted. And yes, automatically requested absentee ballots are returned as undeliverable at a higher rate than those of the specifically requested absentee ballots.
But bottom line, automatically transmitted ballots are 26 times more likely to be voted than returned as undeliverable.
Was it truly the intent of the proponents of this legislation to place at risk the 150,000 ballots cast by military and overseas voters, even though they received those ballots automatically, so as to avoid the apparently horrific experience of having 5,578 automatically transmitted absentee ballots returned as undeliverable?
Given the reality of the law, FVAP revised its guidance to Voting Assistance Officers and military and overseas voters, advising them that they would no longer be automatically sent absentee ballots after the year in which the request is made, and to submit a new absentee ballot request each and every year. It would be irresponsible of us to not try to measure the effectiveness of that new guidance, and see how absentee ballot requests are actually coming in, to see if we need to revise our guidance and voting assistance programs.
Given that this is an off-year election, we’d measure those numbers against 2006 numbers and not 2008, discounting the expected number of automatically registered absentee ballot requests under the old law.
Hope that answers your concerns. If you or your readers have a better way for us crack this nut and optimize our voting assistance programs, we’re all ears. Call me or email me.
Sincerely,
Bob Carey
Director, Federal Voting Assistance Program
703-588-8118
Robert.Carey@fvap.gov
Mr. Carey,
Thanks for your response to the post. I’ve submitted our numbers to our Illinois election office.
What was striking to me was that we lost a third of our primary ballots from 2006. However, at the same time we had also included all of the 2008s in our 2010 mailing because we felt that the original two election cycles agreement made with their 2008 request should be honored. So I’m not sure how to attribute the drop off.
I’m hopeful that some of the changes made with the MOVE act will help us keep track of voters. I don’t know if the voters will be reminded each year or not, but I think they should, and we would intend to.
Ironically, in Champaign County we have taken steps to facilitate absentee voting through the mail. So a voter residing in Champaign County can make a secure request on our website for an absentee ballot. Under this new law, overseas voters will have to make an annual written request. If that same voter, who is a full-fledged voter in Champaign County, went to our website, instead of the MOVE Act website, they would be able to get a ballot sent to them without having to fill out the FPCA, although they would have to complete the application sent with the ballot. I believe the process would be expedited for that voter by using the Champaign County service as opposed to the MOVE act service.
It is going to be interesting to see how the various databases are designed. I’ve submitted my suggestions to the Illinois SBE. Perhaps the practical implementation of this law will be better than what one insinuates from the law itself. We certainly can hope.
I also agree with you that the special elections present a problem, as do the earliest of state primaries. Presidential primaries routinely change dates, and expecting voters in a war zone to keep up with the whims of the state legislatures regarding primary dates is a little much.
Finally, thank you for attempting to gather the data to measure the impact of this law. I’ll look forward to the analysis.