A friend of mine who is a research librarian (compulsively looks everything up to get the facts right) and a military wife with a deployed husband, says:
“I appreciate the concern of well intentioned people who enacted the requirement of voting assistance offices for absentee military personnel. However, no additional funding was provided for this service, and it is the military’s job to prov
ide it. So, it becomes an additional duty for personnel, which means they’re not doing their assigned job while staffing the voter help desk. Honestly, bases don’t need a walk-in voting assistance office. The forms could easily be distributed to family support services where they could be made available along with computer access to EAC.gov - most, if not all of these offices already provide free internet access to personnel and their dependents. The most important piece of information that must be gotten to all military personnel is that they MUST submit a new FCPA (absentee ballot request) prior to the November election. This is a NEW requirement that most active duty military voters do not know nor understand why. Walk-in offices squirreled away wherever the base can afford to put them will not solve this communication problem.”
She advised that members of the military should go online at fvpa.gov to request their FCPA form. Right away.
Now is the time to get this info out to your deployed friends and relatives.