The Unified and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act: The Case Against the GOP, the Defense, and the Defense
“It’s a sort of ripe time for the intentional insertion of distrust and conspiracy theories and tearing down faith in our electoral process,” Boockvar said last week during a press briefing organized by Issue One, a democracy-focused advocacy group. There’s a lot of protections in place. This is such a critical right for our American citizens overseas and in the military. Adding doubt and intentional distrust is another example of what we don’t need.
Passed in 1986, a federal law known as the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act has required states to allow military members and their family members, plus other so-called UOCAVA voters, to cast absentee ballots in federal elections.
Ryan served two tours in Iraq as an intelligence officer, and he wrote to the Defense about how important a free and fair election is to service men and women.
In their lawsuits, the Republican groups are asking the courts to order the election officials to not count the returned ballots until the voters eligibility can be verified.
But election officials warn that would introduce a new process that could bring confusion and disrupt an already-tense period for election workers, who are under public pressure to report accurate vote tallies as soon as possible.
The swing state of Pennsylvania has election rules that allow UOCAVA voters’ ballots to be received up to seven days after Election Day.
Heckel says the challenge is a continuation of litigation filed in 2020 in an effort to throw out the votes of millions of Pennsylvanians and overturn the results of that legitimate election. “Those efforts failed then, and these latest dishonest efforts will also fail.”
The GOP lawmakers case was compared to efforts during the presidential election in a statement by a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State.
“We are right now in a cycle of spectacularly invented controversy, where the problems aren’t real problems but fuel an outrage machine,” says Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School, who has served as a Justice Department official and in the Biden administration as a White House voting rights policy adviser.
With absentee voting underway, election officials and other voting experts are raising concerns that these legal challenges may discourage eligible voters from casting ballots and sow the grounds for questioning the upcoming results.
The Michigan judge and Pennsylvania case’s federal judge both held hearings last week, and now attorneys are waiting for their decisions. There is a hearing in the case on Monday.
Many legal experts do not expect these cases to go anywhere. The timing of the lawsuits are one of the procedural problems they point to.
The U.S. Military and Overseas Citizens of the United States Can Vote: Michigan Appeals to the State Supreme Court in a Changing General Election Law
The children of active-duty military service members are being targeted by the RNC for their voting rights, as stated by a Michigan Department of State spokeswoman.
To comply with UOCAVA’s requirements, North Carolina’s election rules allow absentee voting by citizens who were born outside the U.S. and whose parent or legal guardian’s former residence is in the state. If a United States citizen who has never lived in the U.S. but has a parent or spouse who has previously resided in Michigan, can register to vote, they can cast their ballot in Michigan, according to the secretary of state.
These rules were put in place for many years to help make it easier for US citizens to vote.
But in court, the Republican National Committee argued against the eligibility of that category of overseas voters, who, the RNC contended, do not meet requirements under Michigan’s constitution for voters to be state residents.
That law, however, specifically exempts overseas voters from having to provide a document proving their identity. When registered to vote abroad, voters must provide their driver’s license number or the last digit of their Social Security number if they don’t have one. The state would have to assign them a unique ID number. But federal law defers to states to determine whether the information provided is “sufficient” according to their state laws.
In the final weeks before Election Day, Republican groups have filed lawsuits in the swing states of Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania that challenge the validity of ballots cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, including members of the U.S. military.
Even if these lawsuits are ultimately tossed out of the courts, Lang of the Campaign Legal Center is concerned about the costs of this controversy on eligible voters living abroad.
The RNC brought its case weeks before the last day of voting in Michigan, as demonstrated by the opinion issued by the judge in the case. The lawsuit is supposed to prevent these electors from voting in the general election.
An Application to the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UNIVAV) in Michigan if the U.S. Citizen Never Lived in the United States
For years, Michigan has allowed eligible uniformed service members and other citizens living outside the U.S. to vote in federal elections, as required by a federal law known as the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. In order to vote in Michigan, a United States citizen who has never resided in the United States but has a parent, legal guardian or spouse who lived there, must have not voted in another state.
The instructions in the secretary of state’s manual for election officials are in line with federal and state law.
Many legal experts believe that these cases are not likely to go anywhere because they were filed after the ballots were sent.