Mayor Bloomberg Slams Board of Elections for Failure to Mail Military Ballots

[Rheo]

Fox News:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg slammed the state's Board of Elections on Monday for failing to mail out absentee ballots to military and overseas voters from New York City and four additional counties.

"I don’t know whether or not the Board of Elections has failed to send out absentee ballots to the military or anybody else, but if they have failed it really is reprehensible," Bloomberg told Fox News. "We send our young men and women overseas to fight and to die for us and we don’t care enough to make sure they get the right to exercise their franchise? That’s what they’re over there fighting for as much as anything else."

FoxNews.com first reported Sunday that New York had not mailed out absentee ballots to all its 320,000 military servicemen and women and overseas voters, in clear violation of the MOVE Act.

As of Monday at noon, the ballots still had not been sent.

According to the 2009 MOVE Act, a state must send out its military and overseas ballots 45 days prior to elections.

New York was granted a waiver to this deadline by the Department of Justice and given an additional 15 days — until October 1 — to send out all its ballots. On October 5, New York State Board of Elections co-directors informed federal officials that the state had not fully met its extended deadline, according to an e-mail posted online at FVAP.gov, the website of the Defense Department agency tasked with overseeing military voting.