Overseas Absentee Ballot Handling in DOD
Abstract
On November 28, 2000, the Secretary of Defense requested that the Office of the Inspector General, DoD, review the procedures for handling overseas absentee ballots, ballot cancellation and postmarking procedures, and any discrepancies between those procedures and how they were implemented. The Secretary stated that he wanted to make sure that DoD had done everything in its authority to ensure that active duty personnel, their dependents, and DoD civilians were encouraged to vote and understood the absentee ballot process. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (the Act) requires States to permit absent uniformed Service voters and overseas voters to use absentee registration procedures and to vote by absentee ballot in Federal elections. Executive Order 12642, Designation of the Secretary of Defense as the Presidential Designee,la assigns primary responsibility for Federal functions of the Act to the Secretary of Defense. DoD Directive 1000.4, Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), September 4, 1996, delegates authority to the Director of Administration and Management, Office of the Secretary of Defense, to carry out the Federal Voting Assistance Program responsibilities of the Secretary of Defense. The goals of the Federal Voting Assistance Program are to inform and educate U.S. citizens worldwide of their right to vote, foster voting participation, and protect the integrity of the voting process. The Federal Voting Assistance Program developed a variety of comprehensive resources that are useful to voting assistance officers and potential absentee voters. The Federal Voting Assistance Program also does considerable work with the States to simplify absentee voting procedures. In addition, for the November 2000 election, the Federal Voting Assistance Program provided training sessions to a worldwide network of voting assist(age 18 and over) of active duty personnel, and 86,600 DoD civilians located overseas.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 22, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA391968
Entities
Organizations
- Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense