On August 27, the federal government refused to exempt Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii and Wisconsin from the new federal law that tells states they must mail overseas absentee ballots no later than 45 days before the election. See this story, on how the denial of the waiver affects Hawaii. It is likely that these states will now consent to count foreign absentee ballots even if they arrive late.
Also see this story. The federal government also denied waivers to the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands. However, it granted waivers to Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington.
More UNequal loopholes for the EVIL regime to play with — in any marginal minority rule gerrymander districts ??? Duh,
i.e. more EVIL in the EVIL regime.
Well duh!
The democrat regime uses ever trick in the book to stuff ballot boxes. Guess where the most overseas absentee ballots come from? (rhetorical question, sorry) Republican military voters. How low can you go dems???!
Here are links to the waiver request and decisions.
http://www.fvap.gov/reference/laws/waivers.html
The key to the success of DE, MA, NY, RI, and WA appears to be that they permit 45 days from the time absentee ballots are sent, until when they must be returned. In addition, all the plans include elements providing expedited delivery and return of ballots.
The states and other entities that failed, AK, CO, HI, WI, DC, and VI, tended to permit late returns, but not the full 45 days. They were also among the latest to send out ballots. It is not clear whether they also proposed any of the elements of expedited delivery and return, sense once the decision calculated that there were not 45 days the waiver was denied. Colorado’s waiver was denied because they didn’t show hardship (the primary was August 10).
In effect the successful states said, we have a hardship. But we are going to allow a 45-day loop and try to help voters get their ballots sooner. The denied states said, we have a hardship. We’ll allow the voters 40 days, give us a waiver. In essence they were interpreting the law to mean, that once the hardship was recognized, the DOJ should grant a waiver based on a best effort, given the lateness of their primaries.
The problem is that the easiest way to comply is to hold early primaries. An election schedule like that in Texas is ideal since candidates are set by the end of June.
It is also not clear whether the late passage of the federal law (late October 2009) was a factor in the decision. So will the states that were granted waivers in 2010, be granted waivers in 2012 under similar circumstances?
What needs to be done is for US government to operate overseas polling places, at military bases, embassies, and consulates. Require the states to electronically transmit a ballot to the US government, who can transmit it to the overseas polling place. The overseas polling places can verify voters, and then ship the completed ballots back after election day.
So the overseas voter only has to deal with the federal government, the federal government only has to communicate with the states, and the local election officials only have to communicate with their state election officials.