RNLA reports on the Concerns About Military Disenfranchised Expressed at Summit: On Friday, the Overseas Voter Foundation held its sixth annual Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act Summit, a conference dedicated to overseas military voting rights. Representatives from the government tried to emphasize that turnout increased among military voters. However, the Military Voter Protection Project (MVVP) released a separate report, basing it off of Election Assistance Commission Data. The MVVP found that the turnout of military voters did not increase. (Click here for the differences between the government’s data and the MVPP’s data.) Even if you accept the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s data, there is still reason for concern. The 2010 Federal Voting Assistance Program report did indicate that: Unfortunately, 29% of active duty military voters indicated they never received the absentee ballot they requested, up from 16% in 2008. That represents approximately 120,000 active duty military personnel who never received their absentee ballot. How can the federal government celebrate the “progress” in terms of military voting rights when they admit “[u]nfortunately” disenfranchising 120,000 of them? At the 2012 summit, the 2009 Ed Meese Award winner and Heritage Foundation scholar Hans von Spakovsky offered a few explanations for how military voters have been disenfranchised. He criticized the “inattention and incompetence by the Department of Justice” with regard to enforcement of the MOVE (Military Voter and Overseas Empowerment) Act.