department of defense is failing to provide voter assistance to military members. even their families and that is a violation of federal law. molly henneberg with the story. a group of republican senators are trying to get them know move in on the situation. and requires that the defense department set up a voter assistance office on every military base or installation, to help servicemen and women registered to vote and requested an absentee ballot. the pentagon s inspector general wrote in a report last week that quote, we attempted to contact 100% of the installation. and results were clear. our attempts to contact the ibao, stands for installation voter assistance offices, failed about 50% of the time. and republican senators kornyn, and barrasso and burr
new report is raising concerns that the defense department is not providing enough voting assistance on military bases that would violate the 2009 overseas voter empowerment act. now a group of senators is calling for action. medical medical is live in washington. all right. so this law requires voter assistance office on every military base. so is that happening? rick: the pentagon inspector general checked on those voter assistance offices and wrote in a report last week that, quote, we attempted to contact 100% of the installations, the bases, results were clear, our attempts to contact ivao s, installation voter assistance offices, failed, about 50% of the time. republican senators cornyn, ayotte, imhoff, chapel business and burr are alarmed by this and say it s a clear violation of the 2009 law which was designed to help servicemen and women register to vote and request an
are alarmed by this and say it s a clear violation of that 2009 law. in a letter to defense secretary leon panetta, they write, dod, that s the department of defense s implementtation of the voter on base system has been at best a hollow exercise. many of the based assistance offices that do exist are grossly inadequate and at least half of them are either closed or completely unstaffed. the pentagon says there s a simple explanation for this. the contact information that the inspector general was use to go contact the bases was out of date. we have joint bases that we have, other kinds of things that happen so that in any military environment, whether the subject be voting or anything else, phone numbers change and e-mail addresses change. secretary panetta has the not responded publicly to the senator s larry, but a