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In Focus This Week

Uniform act on military and overseas voting discussed
Proposed act includes a number of improvements

By Matthew Morse

Legal experts from around the country recently discussed a uniform act on military and overseas voting as part of the annual Uniform Law Commission meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The Military Services and Overseas Civilian Absentee Voters Act proposes a number of improvements, including electronic transmission of voter registration, absentee ballot application, and unvoted ballots; increased use of the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot (FWAB); tracking and confirmation of applications and ballots; and elimination of state witness and notary requirements.

The new provisions would apply to any general, special, primary, or runoff election for federal, state, or local government office.

The Uniform Law Commission (ULC), formerly known as The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, is comprised of lawyers, judges, legislators, legislative staff, and law professors who are dedicated to “enactment of uniform state laws in areas of state law where uniformity is desirable and practical.”

In order to create a uniform act, the law must be presented to all commissioners during at least two consecutive annual meetings. At the first reading before the ULC, members have the ability to make recommended changes or raise concerns with any piece of legislation. Drafting Sessions are then conducted throughout the year to make additional adjustments and prepare a uniform act for the following year’s annual meeting. If commissioners adopt the uniform act, then legislators return to their home states to build support for the act in state legislatures.

This detailed process ensures that experts from diverse backgrounds inform the drafting process, identifying subtle nuances in the language that could have a large impact on this important voting community.

Steve Wilborn, Chair of the Drafting Committee, explained that the process allows the commission to develop uniform acts that have been vetted, so when they reach a legislature, many of the issues have already been worked out.

“At one point, we benefited from the perspective of a former military JAG officer who offered insights on specific legislative language that should be used when discussing” military personnel and overseas deployment, Wilborn mentioned. “Without his background, and without also having election law experts all present in the same room, we would not have been able to produce such a strong product.”

The Reporter for the Drafting Committee, Prof. Steven Huefner, recalled another specific example. “We discovered that when a military voter seeks to mail back an absentee ballot that has ‘USA’ in the address, rather than only the state and zip code, that can actually slow down the processing of that ballot” due to the nature of how absentee ballots are handled by Military Mail.

ULC commissioners closely scrutinize each uniform law while trying to balance the urgency of each individual legal topic.

“Due to the timing and significance of these issues with elections, we hope to have the final reading this coming summer,” said Wilborn.

The Question of Uniformity
Uniform acts have the benefit of addressing areas of inconsistent or outmoded state laws. For example, many states do not provide enough time for military and overseas citizens to vote or have inconsistencies in their acceptance of the FWAB or notary requirements.

The current uniform act would address these issues my making universal improvements across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Other changes would require electronic transmission of blank ballots and voter registration materials via e-mail or the Internet.

Several of these changes have already been incorporated into a federal bill and would cover all elections for federal office. The legislation, known as the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, passed the Senate as part of the National Defense Authorization Act would make great improvements for American citizens living and stationed abroad, but cannot govern state or local elections. The bill is headed to conference following the August recess.

For this reason, the MOVE Act and Military Services and Overseas Civilian Absentee Voters Act have been described as “hand in glove” because of their complementary nature and ability to create improved, standardized election practices in all states for all levels of elections.

The past few weeks have also seen new research in the field of overseas and military voting, including many problems that could be addressed by better standards and increased uniformity. Just last week, the Brennan Center for Justice published a new report highlighting challenges facing military and overseas voters in the voter registration process. 

“[E]arlier this year, the recently appointed Director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program in the Department of Defense, Bob Carey, testified before the United States Senate that the registration rate for military voters is almost 20 percentage points lower than that for all Americans,” the report discussed. The report also found, based on 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey data, that military voters report registration problems nearly twice as much as non-military voters.

Support for the Military Services and Overseas Civilian Absentee Voters Act is provided by a grant from Pew Center on the States.