Guys, we fought this war already. And the Union won, remember?
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (”UOCAVA”) is the single most important piece of legislation to Democrats Abroad. It’s our leg to stand on in our constant battle with the states to count overseas absentee votes. UOCAVA is the federal law that says all overseas citizens have the right to vote in federal elections in the last state they lived in. UOCAVA standardized the registration process, so one form, the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) is accepted by all the states as both a voter registration form and an absentee ballot request. UOCAVA also created the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot, (FWAB) as an emergency back-up ballots that all states must accept if a voter doesn’t receive their official state ballot in time to send it back before the deadline.
Granted, there is a ton of work left to do. There is more than enough room for 51 different sets of rules and regulations about overseas absentee voting within UOCAVA, and some states try to do everything they can to get around it altogether. For example:
Alabama was refusing to accept FWABs, on the grounds that its state laws superseded federal law, and UOCAVA magically didn’t apply to them. Last time I checked, oh, I’d say around the time of Brown v. Board, federal law always trumps state law. Alabama, determined to be difficult, did not give in until we got the Department of Justice involved. I’m sure Alabama’s Republican Attorney General was thrilled to get that call.
All of a sudden, Utah decides it wasn’t going to count ballots from voters living overseas permanently. A woman from Utah called us to say that she had spoken with her county clerk, who told her that she had to sign the Residency Oath on the back of her ballot for it to count. She’s been living in Canada her whole adult life, and obviously doesn’t live at her voting residence. The clerk said if she signed the oath, she would be perjuring herself and her vote wouldn’t count. But if she didn’t sign the oath, her vote also wouldn’t count. The solution after we went to bat for her? Sign the oath – but she had to tell the clerk there was a chance she would come back to the U.S. and live at that address. Which is completely bogus, she’s married to a Canadian, and never plans to come back here permanently.
Cole County in Missouri, according to an e-mail I got from a voter, will not accept all FWABs. When Lindsey called to investigate, she spoke to the head clerk, who told her he’s never heard of UOCAVA, but if she faxes it to him, he might get around to reading it before Christmas. Livid, she tried calling the Missouri Secretary of State, only to be told that they only accept FWABs from voters in “remote locations.”
Federal law requires states to accept a FWAB from any overseas voter who applies for a ballot on time, doesn’t get it, and mails their FWAB from outside the country. It doesn’t matter if they’re trekking across the Australian outback and have no access to their mail, or if they’ve lived in the same apartment in Paris for 30 years and get their mail (well, sans state ballot) every day.
To clarify Missouri’s interpretation, though, she asks, “So you’ll count a FWAB from a voter in Zambia, but you won’t count a FWAB from a voter in London, who never got their ballot because their clerk forgot to put enough international postage on it?” What’s the response from the woman she’s talking to? “Where is Zambia?”
Eventually, it becomes clear that Missouri thinks they’ve found a loophole in UOCAVA that exempts them from the requirement of accepting all FWABs. We stick out team of Voter Protection lawyers on the case, who quickly figure out the statute in Missouri state law they’re citing as allowing them to use discretion when accepting FWABs only applies to state and local elections. So they have to count all FWAB votes for federal offices, no matter where the voter is. Sorry, Missouri. Better luck disenfranchising voters next time.
