The Department of Defense is begining to feel the heat from many days of bad national press about sorry military voting numbers.  Drudge moves the conversation. Half of the questions at the daily briefing this week involved the sorry numbers.  The DOD press   The central problem is that FVAP blew many millions of dollars without opening voter offices on all military installations as required by federal law.  Less than half are operational. Military recruitment offices still are failing to follow federal law.

The DOD’s response is Twitter and Facebook, something generating laughs in some Congressional offices.

Like bureaucracies will, they are shooting the messenger bearing bad news.  But no amount of DOD counter-spin can overcome the fact that less than half of military installations have voting offices.  No spin can overcome the fact that DOD is failing to comply with Motor Voter regarding recruitment offices.  The “quite old” data was updated this week.  Here is some typical bureaucrat doublespeak:

“The Department has assisted more than 500,000 service members in the first six months of this year alone,” Little added.

Ah ha! That must mean the data showing only 50,000 requests for ballots must be wrong.  No, not really.  The 500k number means any contact, as Little had to reveal on follow up:

“though he acknowledged that the figure reflects “a range of services we’ve provided,” not just absentee ballot requests.”

Meanwhile, reporters are asking questions about particular partisans who have been hired by FVAP.  Stay tuned.