For the past couple of months, Fox News has been peddling the bogus story that members of the military are being disenfranchised by the Obama administration for the midterm elections. It took yet another stab at doing so on the October 30 edition of Fox & Friends Saturday.
Co-host Clayton Morris began the segment by asserting that “doubts remain about whether or not some military votes will be counted in the midterm elections as the Department of Justice extends the deadline for postmarking absentee ballots, but only by one day. Imagine that.” That's an apparent reference to the DOJ extending the postmark deadline for absentee ballots in some states from November 1 to November 2, the day of the election. Morris didn't note that extending the deadline past that date would create the possibility that votes could be cast after the election was over and results announced, thus giving voters an opening to change election results after the fact. Indeed, Republicans in Illinois tried to eliminate the deadline completely. As the DOJ's Civil Rights Section pointed out, “There has never been such a remedy ordered in our nation's history, and that's the remedy they are seeking.”
Morris then hosted Scott Taylor, a failed Republican congressional candidate who, according to Morris, has “just returned from the Middle East.” Taylor claimed that troops are unsure whether their votes would be counted. Morris responded, “I think most Americans find this absolutely appalling, and it's shocking that Washington hasn't done more to address this issue.”
Absent from their conversation was exactly what the Obama administration and Congress have done on the issue. There was no mention of the MOVE Act, passed by Congress in 2009 and signed by President Obama as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, which establishes deadlines states must follow in order to ensure that overseas and military votes get counted. States unable to send out ballots in accordance with the law's requirement that they be sent 45 days before the midterm election -- usually because they held primaries too close to the deadline -- must apply for a waiver from the DOJ, which the Department of Defense must also approve.
States that failed to meet the prescribed deadlines have been targeted by action from the DOJ. For instance, the DOJ sued the state of New York after several jurisdictions failed to meet the deadline for mailing ballots. In all, the DOJ sued four states and Guam over MOVE Act violations; nine other states and territories reached out-of-court settlements.
But Fox News is clearly not eager to give a Democratic administration credit for protecting military and overseas voters. It's too busy with the final push of its aggressive get-out-the-vote effort for Republicans.