Congressman Frost Announces New VOTES Act to Ensure All Servicemembers Can Participate in Elections
ORLANDO, FL — Today, Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (FL-10) was joined by local Central Florida leaders as he unveiled the Voting Overseas Treated Equally for Servicemembers (VOTES) Act, legislation to support and protect the right to vote of servicemembers serving overseas.
Specifically, Congressman Frost’s bill would fix a gap in federal law that only allows “active duty” servicemembers stationed overseas to request an absentee ballot, excluding potentially thousands of overseas servicemembers who might have a different duty status such as “active service” or “inactive duty-training.”
These servicemembers may be members of the Reserve or National Guard who are deployed as part of military drills or critical training exercises but who never receive “active duty” status. In 2021 alone there were over 760,000 Reserve and National Guard servicemembers and it’s unclear how many of those folks were stationed overseas and unable to participate in our democracy.
Frost stood alongside Pernell Bush, a local U.S. Marine veteran, and Michael Adams from the City of Orlando’s Veterans Advisory Council in calling the VOTES Act an important opportunity to reaffirm our support for the brave people currently protecting our very democracy.
“As it stands right now, thousands of service members, many of whom have put their lives on the line and sacrificed being close to their families and friends in order to serve this country, are unable to participate in elections,” said Congressman Maxwell Frost. “It is a huge oversight of our government that these servicemembers doing their honorable duty to defend and protect our democracy are currently being excluded from our democratic process. The bipartisan VOTES Act is our opportunity to extend the guarantee of being able to participate in democracy to all servicemembers, not just some.”
The VOTES Act has been endorsed by American Legion, Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States, National Guard Association of the United States, and VoteVets.
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