Lib group seeks to stop overseas military from using electronic voting ballots, cite ‘security’ concerns

With the approaching 2018 midterm elections, a liberal policy group with ties to former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is now trying to make it harder for members of the U.S. military to vote.

After crying foul over supposed voter suppression by states for years, the Center for American Progress is now citing election security as a reason to prohibit overseas military from submitting ballots via email or fax, The Washington Times reported.


The left-wing group, founded by former Clinton and Obama White House adviser John Podesta, released a 245-page report on Monday titled,  “Election Security in All 50 States,” which called on states like Colorado to “prohibit voters stationed or living overseas from returning voted ballots electronically.”

“Regardless of the state’s secure ballot return system for electronically voted ballots, we recommend that all voted ballots be returned by mail or delivered in person,” the report stated.

Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams fired back at the group, citing safeguards that are in place to protect the ballots cast by military members serving overseas.

“They don’t believe someone who works on a submarine should be allowed to vote. We do,” the Republican said in a statement, according to the Times.


The conservative website Colorado Peak Politics echoed the criticism leveled at the group’s report by conservatives who see the demand as based solely on politics.

“Perhaps they think that Navy SEALs can swim ballots ashore, hand them off to Army paratroopers who can parachute into Colorado to drop off the ballots?” the website asked sarcastically in a post on Monday. “You can bet that if the military historically voted Democrat instead of Republican, the Center for American Progress would not have a problem with it.”

The Center for American Progress graded the 50 states and the District of Columbia on an A to F scale with no state receiving a “A” for security standards.

“Election infrastructure in most states remain susceptible to attacks by sophisticated enemies,” the center concluded as five states scored a “F” and paperless, electronic voting machines were cited as the “biggest threat to election security,” according to the report.

The move to limit voting may seem surprising for the left-wing group with Podesta on the board given its track record of pushing to make voting easier for felons, advocating for same-day voter registration while opposing efforts to remove inactive voters from rolls as well as state demands that require voters to present government-issued photo identification to cast ballots.


But, for some, the proposal “shouldn’t be a surprise” as using the excuse of cyber security to limit the voting access of overseas military seems to be more about politics than protection.

“CAP would oppose that because they don’t like that the military votes against their interests nearly all of the time,” J. Christian Adams, who runs the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation, said, according to the Times. “But there are very few votes that come in that way, so it’s not a really big issue. CAP wants to make it easier for felons and criminals to vote, but wants to make it harder for fighting men and women overseas.”

Apparently the fight to end voter suppression by CAP only applies to certain groups, their political ideology and their voting preferences.


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