From the Washington Post:   Maryland voters would cast ballots in the 2012 presidential primary election in April and the 2014 gubernatorial primary would move from September to June, under legislation moving through the General Assembly….the bill is partly a response to a federal law passed in 2009 designed to ensure that military and overseas voters have sufficient time to receive absentee ballots and participate in elections.  Moving the primary to June in gubernatorial years would be a major change in Maryland politics — effectively extending the general election campaign by a few months.

Hats off to the MVPProject for its intervention on behalf of military voters in Maryland.  This Foxnews article quoted the ruling of the District Court saying the “manner in which Maryland is conducting absentee voting for state offices in the Nov. 2, 2010, election deprives absent uniformed services and overseas voters of their fundamental right to vote.”  As the article indicates, the Voting Section of the Department of Justice declined to intervene to protect that fundamental right to vote.  However, facts continue to dribble out on why Maryland took the peculiar steps of submitting a waiver request to the Department of Defense and then suddenly withdrawing that request when it was clear they would not be able to meet the requirements of the MOVE Act.   Not only had DOJ, the agency responsible for enforcing the MOVE Act, undercut the Department of Defense during the waiver process but now much more damage had been done to the principles set forth in the MOVE Act. 

The testimony of Eric Eversole (the attorney who brought the Maryland case) to the Committee on House Administration reveals that the Voting Section not only declined to intervene on behalf of military members and deployed National Guardsman but actually provided advice to Maryland on how to avoid the MOVE Act and provide less than a full ballot to military voters, a position that a federal district court judge ultimately declared unconstitutional. 

After the dust had settled on the litigation, it became clear that that DOJ had advised Maryland that they would be able to avoid a potential violation of the MOVE Act by mailing, at least 45 days before the election, a ballot that only contained federal races and no state races – a half ballot.  When Maryland decided to take DOJ’s “unconstitutional” advice, a deployed member of the Maryland National Guard was not going to take it laying down.  He filed a lawsuit arguing that this scheme would not provide military voters in Maryland (like himself) with sufficient time to vote in multiple state races, such as the race for Governor, and that he would be deprived of his fundamental right to vote. The federal judge agreed and ordered the state to provide additional time for the regular ballots to be returned.  In the end, over 600 military and overseas voters were finally able to vote a full ballot with adequate time for return.  If the advice of DOJ has been followed, deployed National Guardsmen in Iraq or Afghanistan would have been forgotten and their votes ignored.