With 60,000 members, the Reserves Officers Association (ROA) is the largest military reserve officers association in the country and the Service Members Law Center was established by ROA as the legal arm related to military voting and employment issues.  In a recent law review article focusing on the military voting failures in Wisconsin, the Service Members Law Center has come to the same conclusion that the Military Voter Protection Project, commentators and newspapers have recognized for some time:  DOJ is not adequately investigating or enforcing the MOVE Act and the efforts of private citizens and even students are necessary to fill the enforcement gap.

In recognition that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is simply not up to the job, the Service Members Law Center specifically called on citizens to play the role of neighborhood watchmen to investigate and call local election officials to determine whether overseas military ballots have been timely mailed by applicable federal deadlines under the MOVE Act. 

However, there is much more to this story.  It is intriguing why the powerhouse ROA would recommend that “citizen investigators” directly contact the Director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) when that Department of Defense agency has no actual enforcement authority.  Note the total absence of referral requests to the Department of Justice.   

So we asked the question why?  Our sources (close to DOJ and FVAP) indicate that the two federal agencies may not be playing well with each other.  While we are aware of simmering tensions between the two agencies over the last few years, their apparent feud has grown to the point where DOJ has started to exclude FVAP entirely from the enforcement process.  For example, in the most recent military voting case in Wisconsin, our sources stated that DOJ did not consult at all with FVAP about the case or the remedies settlement. 

This apparent conflict between FVAP and DOJ does not bode well for military voters in 2012.  Rather than working together to ensure that military voters are able to vote, these two federal agencies appear to be locked in an internal power struggle over the enforcement of these cases.  If the ROA is now involved in that conflict, it very well may escalate in the coming months.  Stay tuned.