Secretary of State candidate wants to improve voting access for military

DES MOINES — The Democratic candidate seeking to be Iowa's next secretary of state offered three changes to Iowa voting laws Thursday that he hopes will increase participation in elections of military members serving overseas.

Brad Anderson of Des Moines said his 'common-sense' proposals would include reaching out to the U.S. Department of Defense and the Iowa National Guard to identify ways to improve the ease of registering to vote and casting ballots.

Also, Anderson said he wants to 'modernize and simplify' the processes by going to a system of online voter registration. He also wants to establish an educational program in the months leading up to a military deployment on the process of casting a ballot overseas.

Anderson also wants Iowa to join 41 other states in allowing voters to use the federal write-in absentee ballot that Congress created in 2009 so military personnel could participate in state and local elections. The write-in ballot, which Anderson called a last resort for military voters who have requested an absentee ballot but have not received it by 14 days before an election, can be downloaded online and returned to the voter's county auditor by mail, email or fax.

'I believe — given the risks our military men and women take every day to defend our democracy — we need to do everything in our power to ensure that they can participate in the very democracy that they are defending,' Anderson told a news conference.

Anderson pointed to a 2008 ranking by the nonpartisan Overseas Vote Foundation that placed Iowa first in the ease of military and overseas voting. But, he said, since then Iowa has fallen behind and dropped from fifth in 2008 to 15th in 2012 in the Pew Elections Performance Index. That's in part due to nearly 6 percent of military ballots being rejected and another 21 percent of ballots requested by military members serving overseas going unreturned.

'Iowa cannot continue to lose ground when it comes to military and overseas voting,' Anderson said. 'As our next secretary of state, I will make it a priority to put Iowa back at the top in voter turnout and ease of voting for overseas Iowans.'

Anderson said he believed the changes would 'make a pretty dramatic difference.'

'Whether we're talking about 10 voters or whether we're talking about 10,000, that's not the point,' he added. 'The point is every single military personnel overseas should be given every opportunity to vote in our democracy back home and that's my goal.'

Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald said there is 'nothing worse' that sending out ballots to military members eligible to vote only to have them returned unopened to the auditor's office because the person who requested the absentee ballot had moved.

'I do appreciate what Brad is bringing to the table and fully support it,' said Fitzgerald, a Democrat.