Last Friday, I blogged a story describing concerns about the slow pace of absentee ballot requests across the country, especially in the military. Those numbers were (in part) the focus of a hearing in the House Armed Services Committee yesterday. The slowdown is giving rise to fears that efforts to encourage and enable military and overseas voting (specifically, the MOVE Act) aren’t working -or aren’t being implemented – the way Congress intended. But now, thanks to George Mason’s Michael McDonald and his United States Election Project, comes the information that other factors may be at work – and that absentee ballots might not be slowing down as much as people think:
The number of ballot requests … continues to steadily increase, with an updated 2,476 reported on Tuesday (revised from 2,129) and a preliminary 2,386 on Wednesday. The number of absentee ballot requests is now 32,158. I previously discussed an apparent decline in the number of absentee ballot requests in comparison to 2008. Then, at the start date of mail balloting there were 37,539 absentee ballot requests.