At the end of last year, Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., introduced legislation that would protect and support the voting rights of service members overseas. The Voting Overseas Treated Equally for Servicemembers (VOTES) Act would ensure that all of those who serve can receive a mail-in ballot to exercise their constitutional rights, regardless of their rank or status. As it stands now, only active duty service members are eligible to request absentee ballots from their states, while inactive duty-training, active service, and reserve statuses have been left out of the legislation. Rep. Frost’s bill offers a solution to that problem. 

“As it stands right now, thousands of service members, many of whom have put their lives on the line and sacrificed being close to their families and friends in order to serve this country, are unable to participate in elections,” he said. “It is a huge oversight of our government that these service members doing their honorable duty to defend and protect our democracy are currently being excluded from our democratic process. The VOTES Act is our opportunity to extend the guarantee of being able to participate in democracy to all servicemembers, not just some.”

EANGUS is among the organizations, including the American Legion and VoteVets, that endorses this bipartisan bill after a productive meeting in Rep. Frost’s office today. We are proud to support this key legislation that protects the voting rights of those who give us voting rights.