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Is This Why Military Not Getting Ballots?
Absentee vote requests strangely down by staggering numbers
WND
by Aaron Klein
During one of the most hotly contested elections in recent U.S. history, the number of military absentee ballot requests is strangely down by staggering numbers compared to the 2008 election.
The information comes as WND confirmed today that SCYTL, an international firm headquartered in Spain, has been contracted by seven states to provide secure online ballot delivery for overseas military and civilian voters for the upcoming presidential election.
Michelle M. Shafer, SCYTL’s director of communications and government affairs, told WND that her company has been contracted by New York, Arkansas, Alabama, West Virginia, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Mississippi to provide the overseas ballots.
She said the ballots will be delivered via online PDF files by SCYTL and not by the company’s U.S. subsidiary, SOE Software. In January, SCYTL purchased SOE Software, the leading U.S. electronic voting firm.
Next month’s election marks the second time SCYTL will provide overseas balloting. During the 2010 midterm elections, the company was contracted by the Defense Department’s Federal Voting Assistance Program to support overseas military and civilian voting in nine of the 20 States that agreed to participate in the program. SCYTL was the provider with the highest number of participating states during that election.
The Defense Department has been coming under fire after reports of an exponentially low number of requests for military absentee ballots this year compared to the 2008 election.
The Military Voter Protection Project last week released the results of a study listing the number of requests in key states such as Virginia, where military absentee ballot requests are down 92 percent compared to 2008. In Ohio, only 9,700 absentee ballots have been requested as of late September compared to more than 32,000 in 2008.
Florida so far has 37,953 requested ballots as of last month as opposed to 86,926 in 2008 – a difference of 48,973. North Carolina only has 1,859 requests listed compared to 13,508 in 2008.
Just this week, a Military Times survey of military forces showed Republican nominee Mitt Romney with a 26-percent lead over the president. The Times survey follows an earlier Rasmussen poll that showed a 59 to 35 percent lead for Romney among military service voters.
The low number of military requests perplex Republican lawmakers who in 2009 pushed and passed the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, which was supposed to make it easier for overseas military personnel to vote.
The law required a voter assistance office at every military installation. It also automatically provides military voters with an opportunity to update their voter information during the check-in process at their duty stations.
However, last month the Defense Department’s Inspector General reported that the Pentagon was not complying with the 2009 law, citing information that only about half of overseas locations had functioning voter assistance offices.
Pam Mitchell, acting director of the Defense Department’s Federal Voting Assistance Program, the same program that contracted SCYTL in 2010, said at a briefing last month that voting assistance “has never been better.”
She further claimed the Inspector General may have had trouble reaching voting assistance offices because “in a military environment, times change.”
