HB711: Military Absentee Voting

In response to the Department of Justice lawsuit regarding military absentee voters, the Alabama House of Representatives has passed HB711. The bill attempts to address the concerns of the Justice Department by creating an "instant runoff" ballot. It would leave the runoff date scheduled for the last Tuesday in June, which is on June 27th this year.

The instant runoff ballot would be sent with the primary election ballot to military voters who are overseas. Using this special ballot, when an office has more than one candidate, the voter would mark the candidates in order of preference. For those candidates involved in a runoff, election officials would review the preferences of the military voters to determine which one should get the vote of each military voter.

The instant runoff ballot has potential. However, it has several problems:

1) It doesn't address the primary reason for the DOJ lawsuit. The Department of Justice contends that there is not enough time between the primary and the runoff elections for military personnel to exercise their right to vote in the primary runoff. HB711 as passed does not do anything to increase the amount of time for this absentee voting period.

2) HB711's instant runoff provision assists military voters in the runoff election only if they have applied to vote in the primary election. If a military personnel do not apply in time to vote in the primary election, they will be afforded no protection in casting their vote in the primary runoff. They will be left to vote under a process that the Department of Justice has already says is in violation of federal law. (It is not unheard of for voters to miss the primary election but then decide to vote in the runoff election.)

3) The violations alleged by DOJ involve citizens who live overseas, not just military personnel. While all the attention has been focused on military personnel, Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act protects voting rights not only for military personnel and their dependents but also citizens who are residing overseas: diplomats, businessmen and businesswomen, missionaries, etc. However, HB711 would extend its additional protections only to military voters. [Thanks to Ed Still for bringing this error to my attention . I inadvertently included this criticism which was directed at a different draft bill I had seen on this matter.]

It is odd to see the House of Representatives go through the contortions written into this bill. The bill may not resolve the lawsuit filed by the Justice Department and it really extends only marginal benefits in ensuring that American voters overseas are able to exercise their rights.