At the link, the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), the agency responsible within DOD for assisting overseas military voters, has awarded New York a multi-million dollar grant in an effort to streamline the electronic transmission of blank ballots to over 40,000 voters. 

This grant appears to be the largest awarded to any state or counties and works out to approximately $62 dollars per voter.  Such a large award to New York is highly questionable as New York has not even complied with the MOVE Act and are, in fact, seeking another controversial waiver for the 2012 election.  Once again, New York seeks to go through a series of federal elections in 2012 without having to comply with the MOVE Act, yet the Department of Defense is handing over $2.5 million to a state with dysfunctional electoral processes.   

The same New York violated the MOVE Act in 2010 and, not suprisingly, had the largest number of voters disenfranchised in 2010 with ballots returned late.  In 2010, the state of New York rejected nearly one-third of all absentee ballots from military voters, primarily because they didn’t provide enough time for the ballots to be returned.

The same New York has filed yet another waiver request with FVAP to go through another Presidential election without providing overseas military voters adequate time to return and have their ballots counted.  The New York waiver request from 2010 can be found here.  Even after approval of this waiver and adjustment of timelines, New York promptly violated the waiver agreement and failed to send ballots to thousands of voters.

The same New York that should already have established electronic methods to transmit blank ballots to overseas voters.  This grant begs the question why grant monies are now being spent to provide this technology when they should already be utilizing it.

The same New York that was sued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) a year ago for failing to set a primary date that would allow 45 days for the mailing of absentee ballots to overseas voters.  A year later, there is still no progress on that litigation front as New York fights to remain the #1 disenfranchiser of military and overseas voters.