A pending ruling on mail-in voting deadlines could limit grace periods, raising concerns that overseas troops and military voters could struggle to get their votes counted on time.
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For three years, Alberto Ramos had a 3-inch binder filled with all the important dates and rules related to voting in each state: deadlines for party registration and absentee ballot applications, election dates, and grace periods available to military voters.
In addition to his role directing operations aboard Navy submarines, the now-retired Navy lieutenant commander also coordinated the delivery of ballots onboard ships to assist sailors in voting, and soon began again as a voting assistant officer.
“We worked hard to get the ship up off the coast of this country and get all the mail. This involved things like throwing rope ladders and manually bringing all the mail below deck, sorting the contents, getting people to vote, and getting the mail out of the submarine before it had to go back in the water,” he said.
He and others in similar roles in each branch’s units are doing the “inverse algebra” of calculating how long it takes for a mailed ballot from the nearest port to disembark a Navy ship and return to the United States in time for Election Day. The role is “very important,” he said.
“As a military family, as a veteran and as an active duty military member, I really feel the weight of the election of voting for the people who might send me to war,” Ramos, 38, told USA TODAY.
But a pending Supreme Court ruling on whether states can offer grace periods for election officials to receive ballots postmarked by Election Day could make it more difficult for hundreds of thousands of military personnel stationed overseas or on bases far from home to vote, he said. The ruling could also affect millions of Americans living abroad.
Thirty states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories have “grace period” laws that allow at least some voters’ mail-in ballots to be shipped by Election Day and counted days later. Many of the laws have been in place for decades.
Supreme Court Justice Content
In 2024, a federal appeals court ruled in a lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee that a 100-year-old federal law establishing “election day” prohibits states from granting grace periods for voting by mail. Although the lawsuit challenged Mississippi’s law, the ruling could apply nationwide.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in late March and announce a decision by the end of the month.
Congress has protected voting access for military and overseas voters through the Uniform Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986, which requires states to allow absentee voting, and the Military Non-Military Voter Empowerment Act of 2009, which requires states to send absentee ballots to UOCAVA voters at least 45 days before a federal election.
Neither law mandates a grace period after Election Day, and several bipartisan veterans groups said they were concerned that the court’s ruling could affect military voters and service members overseas and at home.
An RNC spokesperson said federal law already protects military voters.
“Federal law already protects the rights of military voters through UOCAVA, ensuring they can vote absentee from anywhere in the world, and this case does not change those protections in any way,” said Allie Toriolo, director of election integrity communications for the Republican National Committee.
Still, as of 2024, 11 states that normally require domestic mail-in ballots to arrive by Election Day have given military voters additional time to cast their votes, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that promotes bipartisan solutions to policy problems.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, before a 2009 law required states to send ballots to overseas and military voters 45 days in advance, half of states sent out ballots so close to Election Day that voters didn’t have enough time to cast and return their ballots.
“We know that it takes a very long time for ballots to get to the military and then a very long time for them to be returned. And that doesn’t take into account the time along the way where military members have to get their ballots in their hands and consider them, when they might be busy with other really important things,” said David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit that works with election officials to strengthen election security and integrity. “It often involves multiple postal services, not just the U.S. Postal Service, but military postal services, and other countries’ postal services.”
Why military voting takes so long
Submarines often don’t surface for months at a time, and Ramos acknowledged that while it’s a worst-case scenario for receiving and mailing ballots, it will be difficult for U.S. military personnel around the world to get them.
Ramos heads Veterans for All Voters, a veteran-led nonprofit that works on state-level election reform. The group is part of a coalition of groups supporting military voters who are advocating for a seven-day grace period.
According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, in 2024 military and overseas mail-in ballots were rejected for being late at more than eight times the rate of domestic mail-in ballots.
“For states that have a grace period, if we choose to eliminate the grace period, it increases the likelihood that those votes will not be counted,” Ramos said.
stationed in the US
Goldbeck said many military personnel stationed in the United States maintain their voter registration in their home state. The former Marine Corps captain was registered in California while stationed in North Carolina and enrolled in a military academy in Virginia. Ramos said he was also registered in Nevada while in uniform.
“For those of us who have played or are playing, we are literally in the game,” Goldbeck said. “Wearing a uniform takes away a lot of freedom of speech, but making our voices heard at the polls is one of the things we absolutely want to do to ensure that our political leaders send us into foreign intervention and potentially lose our lives.”
Goldbeck leads the Vet Voice Foundation, which works with veterans to become civic and policy leaders. The foundation intervened in the case before the Supreme Court.
In addition to maintaining the status quo and abolishing the grace period, a third option has been floated to the Supreme Court: creating a grace period for military and overseas votes. Goldbeck said he doesn’t see how that would be logistically possible, especially for military personnel based in the United States but registered in other countries.
“Because there are so many different ways to vote by mail, it’s very difficult for election officials to pinpoint whether a vote is from a military voter,” she said.
