absentee ballot. in the letter to defense secretary leon panetta, they say d.o.d. s implementation of the on base voter assistance program has been at best a hollow exercise. many of the on base voter assistance offices that do exist are grossly inadequate and at least half of them are either closed or completely unstaffed. they say the law is, quote, not optional examine that the defense department needs to act immediately to get into compliance. arthel? arthel: what is the response from the pentagon? the pentagon says there is a simple explanation for all of this. the phone numbers and the e-mail addresses that its inspector general was using were wrong. the contact information that they used to try to establish contact with the installation voter assistance offices, very simply was outdated. why was it outdated? because in a military environment, things change. secretary panetta has not