-By J. Christian Adams

What does a Sebastian Junger documentary and the Department of Justice have to do with each other? A lot, especially when the DOJ thinks computers are the answer to protecting military voting rights. Before the next election, every attorney responsible for protecting military voting rights should have to watch this Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance.

During the 2010 election, the Department of Justice was responsible for enforcing the MOVE Act of 2009. The MOVE Act was designed to fix the problems with military voting that had plagued American elections as far back as the Revolutionary War. Servicemembers were simply disenfranchised because they were not sent a ballot early enough for it to be cast and mailed back in the United States by election day. Exacerbating the problem was a Department of Justice that implemented a Keystone Kops enforcement policy in 2008 by deploying [1] inept investigative techniques wholly incapable protecting military voting rights.

The MOVE Act of 2009 mandated that ballots be mailed at least 45 days before an election. But a law is only as good as the people enforcing it.

Instead of strictly enforcing the law, the Department of Justice failed to enforce military voting rights quickly and effectively throughout the fall of 2010. Instead of taking the new law seriously, DOJ officials telegraphed [2] to state election officials they didn’t want to sue any of them for noncompliance. Instead of quickly and aggressively litigating against states who failed to mail ballots 45 days in advance, DOJ cut deals [3] with states like Wisconsin that required ballots only be mailed 32 days before the election. Instead of monitoring compliance with the law, DOJ needed Pajamas Media to break the news [4] three weeks after the deadline that Illinois failed to mail military ballots overseas…..

Read the rest at Pajamas Media.

No related posts.