Talk about kicking another agency when it’s down!  The DOD’s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) has made a dedicated effort, including a concerted lobbying attempt in the Congress, to grab power over election-related data from the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).  During the debate on whether to eliminate the EAC for budgetary reasons, Congressional Democrats have repeatedly condemned the dissolution or dismemberment of the EAC, making the argument that the Commission still serves a valuable purpose, particularly with the collection of UOCAVA ballot and other election-related data from the states.  This data includes the actual census of absentee ballots sent, returned, and eventually (and hopefully) counted by state and county election officials.  

The Executive Branch is obviously not talking to the Legislative Branch.  DOD has clashed repeatedly with EAC staff and worked behind the scenes to Congress and election officials to undermine the EAC data, saying it paints too negative a picture. Now, the Panetta DOD is attempting to propagandize their “success” by highlighting another “rosy” DOD survey and wrest control of election data collection away from the EAC.  Indeed, the FVAP report directly questions the need for the data to be collected and analyzed by the EAC, a separate bipartisan agency created by the Congress and not reportable to the President.  

In its FVAP report to the Congress on Military and Overseas Civilians Absentee Voting, the DOD eschews the EAC data, collected directly from the states, and instead relies on survey responses from 12,000 military members and their spouses.  FVAP’s reports acknowledges that they have been criticized in the past over its small survey sample, but does nothing to correct that issue.  FVAP’s not only criticizes the EAC’s data, but it openly asserts that it wants to “obviate the continuation of a separate EAC report from the FVAP report.”  In other words, DOD wants to kill the EAC and take control of any non-DOD reports that would evaluate the effectiveness of its program.     

Nor are FVAP’s attacks on the EAC warranted especially given the signfiicant improvements made in collection since the 2008 election.  Despite having problems in 2004 and 2006, Congress has since referred to its election data as the “gold standard.”  It was relied upon by Senator Schumer and others to justify the MOVE Act.  

Yet, the EAC’s data paints an incredibly negative picture about FVAP and DOD’s efforts to comply with federal law.  Rather than take reasonable steps to address low military voting participation rates, FVAP would much rather spend a lot of money ($2.3 million for their most recent report – that is almost a $1 per military voters) to claim, “problem solved.”  FVAP has tried to paint a more positive picture of the situation by conducting its own flawed surveys to gloss over the continuing immense problems facing military voters.  While FVAP has made improvements in their surveys, the GAO still questions the underlying reliability of FVAP’s survey methodology.  As recently as 2011, GAO issued a report saying this about FVAP surveys on military voting: 

As part of recent improvements to its survey process, FVAP collaborated with survey professionals in another part of DOD to, among other things, re-word some survey questions and adjust sampling methods in an effort to improve the statistical validity and generalizability of the survey results.  Despite these improvements, concerns remain regarding the evaluative information resulting from the surveys. For example, even though the response rates for some of the surveys are low, FVAP does not conduct a non-response bias analysis that the guidance from the Office of Management and Budget has identified as a necessary step in determining whether survey findings are biased.”

DOD and FVAP’s actions are obvious:  They are now seeking to end the EAC’s collection of data from election officials, end any independent third party oversight, and eliminate the last remaining reason for the EAC’s full or partial continued existence.  To allow FVAP (the very same agency that is responsible for providing assistance to military voters) to wrest the collection of this data to its sole control would be tantamount to allowing the fox to guard the henhouse.