The warriors who defend this country must have their votes counted. That requires two things. The first is access. They need the time, the training, and the assistance to register and cast a ballot from wherever the country sends them. The second is protection. Their votes must not be diluted by overseas civilian ballots cast under rules Congress never wrote.
The Pentagon has failed on both counts. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is correcting that.
Start with access. In 2010 and 2011 I served as an infantry rifle platoon leader in Afghanistan. We operated from a remote combat outpost on the Pakistani border, fighting the Taliban and the Haqqani terror network. Those were the deadliest years of the war.
I also ran the Federal Voting Assistance Program for my unit. My soldiers registered to vote, received their ballots, and cast them from that outpost. Then we went back on patrol. If a rifle platoon can do that under fire, almost any unit can do it anywhere.
No one asked me to increase turnout. I was not permitted to. It was common for Army units to pay more attention to officer and NCO association dues than to whether their troops had ballots in the mail. Leaders treated voting as a political activity rather than a civic duty. No one at the Pentagon decided to disenfranchise servicemembers. It happened anyway, one deployment at a time.
Pete Hegseth described that mindset in "The War on Warriors." He wrote that senior officers put career advancement and political conformity ahead of the troops they command. I watched commanders embrace the political for years. They avoided the patriotic.
The military has never struggled to clear a day when it wants one. In February 2021, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a service-wide stand-down on extremism, with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley behind him. Some units split service members into separate discussion groups by race and gender. The material covered white supremacy and far-right movements. It said nothing about extremism on the left.
Hegseth had watched that firsthand. He deployed to Washington during the 2020 riots and wrote that the worst racism he ever heard came from Antifa and BLM rioters screaming at Black soldiers in his own ranks. None of it appeared in the stand-down material. Conservatives in the ranks understood who the training was aimed at.
Units ran briefings on transgender inclusion the same way, after the previous administration reinstated transgender service. The Pentagon found time for all this radical political training. It can find one day for voting.
Hegseth's initiative puts voting on the calendar. Mandatory training and one stand-down day each year give service members and their families time to complete a Federal Post Card Application. That single form registers them to vote and requests their ballot. No commander tells anyone how to vote. The Pentagon provides the opportunity. Nothing more.
Now take dilution. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) covers two populations: uniformed personnel with their families, and civilians living abroad. The military share is collapsing. In 2010, service members submitted 51 percent of UOCAVA ballots counted, against 40 percent from overseas civilians. By 2024, 70 percent of UOCAVA ballots went to overseas civilians — the widest gap the Election Assistance Commission has ever recorded. The law written for the deployed service member now serves mostly someone else.
UOCAVA exists to protect the military voter. State election officials are not following it.
Numerous states waive the verification of identity and eligibility that federal law requires of registrants using the Federal Post Card Application. Twenty-eight states allow overseas voters to return completed ballots over the internet, which federal law does not require and which carries documented security risks. Thirty-eight states extend UOCAVA privileges to American citizens who have never lived in the United States.
The Secretary of War serves as the Presidential Designee under UOCAVA, and the statute makes him responsible for ensuring state election officials are aware of what it requires. No secretary enforced that requirement, and state election officials took advantage of it. A service member verifies their identity, marks a paper ballot, and mails it from a forward operating base. That ballot then competes with ballots returned over the internet by people who have never lived in the state whose elections they decide.
Hegseth is taking up the authority Congress already gave him. State election officials are on notice. Those waiving verification, accepting ballots over the internet, and registering citizens who have never lived in their states should conform before someone makes them. That is not a partisan act. It is the job.
My soldiers voted from a combat outpost in Operation Enduring Freedom because someone made it a priority. Every unit deserves the same. Hegseth is making sure they get it.
Mark Lucas is Founder and President of Veteran Action. He served with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in the 34th Infantry Division and ran his unit's Federal Voting Assistance Program in Afghanistan as an infantry rifle platoon leader.