No, the Pentagon didn’t fail to send absentee ballots to service members

Millions of Americans voted in the 2024 presidential election, but some viral social media posts claim military service members didn’t receive the same opportunity to do so, citing an article from Townhall.com.

Those posts claim the Pentagon failed to send absentee ballots to active military service members before the election. Absentee voting allows people who can’t vote in person at a polling place, including members of the military, to cast a ballot. 

Google search data also show a spike in people asking about military absentee ballots in the days leading up to the election.

Did the Pentagon fail to send absentee ballots to service members?

No, the Pentagon did not fail to send absentee ballots to service members. States are responsible for sending absentee ballots. 

States are responsible for sending absentee ballots to military service members  – not the Pentagon, as viral posts claim. 

The Department of Defense referred VERIFY to a press conference held by Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder on Nov. 4. During the briefing, Maj. Gen. Ryder addressed a reporter’s question about access to absentee ballots for overseas troops and their families. 

Ryder said the DOD encourages overseas voters to request absentee ballots with the state in which they are registered. 

“We do have a robust education program in terms of getting the word out on how service members and their families can obtain their absentee ballots no matter where you are, whether it’s overseas or whether it’s stationed outside of your state,” Ryder said. 

The false claims are referring to reports of issues with service members receiving something called a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot (FWAB), which is different from a state-issued absentee ballot. These are backup ballots used if state-issued absentee ballots don’t arrive in time. Service members don’t have to request these ballots from the federal government and can print them from the FVAP website.

Military OneSource, a Department of Defense website, explains how service members can vote while they’re away from home and outlines the process for receiving an absentee ballot from their state. 

The Defense Department’s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) encourages service members to fill out what’s called the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) in order to register to vote and request an absentee ballot. 

Those service members will send the completed application to their local election office in the county where they have established residency. 

After state election officials process the FPCA, they will send the service member a blank ballot. The service member then returns the ballot to their state, Military OneSource explains. 

States are responsible for sending these absentee ballots to service members – not the federal government.

The false claims about the Pentagon failing to send absentee ballots appear to stem from a viral X post made by Patrick Webb, who is a co-founder of the conservative website Leading Report, and a Townhall.com article. Both the viral post and the article were shared on Nov. 2. 

The post and article cite an Oct. 30 letter from Republican Reps. Brian Mast, Bill Huizenga and Mike Waltz to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. 

But that letter does not say the Pentagon failed to send absentee ballots to service members. Instead, the representatives expressed concerns about a shortage of the backup federal write-in absentee ballots at military bases. 

In the letter, the Republican representatives said they had concerns over “deficiencies in the Defense Department’s protocols and procedures allowing active-duty service members to vote.” 

Some military members whose state-issued absentee ballots did not arrive in time requested a federal write-in absentee ballot and “were told the base’s stockpile of such ballots was depleted and had not been replenished,” the representatives claimed in the letter.

However, service members do not have to request these write-in ballots from their military bases, as the letter suggests. They can print the ballots themselves from the FVAP website. 

“If a service member has requested a ballot and it hasn’t arrived, they can use the federal write-in absentee ballot immediately at FVAP.gov/FWAB, and this acts as a back-up ballot,” Ryder said during the press conference.