UOCAVA

UOCAVA's 45-day advance-ballot rule sits at the centre of the dispute over South Carolina's special Senate primary calendar , the same calendar under which the state has barred anyone who voted in June's Democratic primary from taking part . Justice Department guidance confirms the 45-day rule reaches primary, general, special and runoff federal elections alike, with no blanket short-notice carve-out for special elections.

Signed into law in 1986, UOCAVA is the only federal statute devoted specifically to voting access for members of the uniformed services and other overseas citizens. It was amended in 2009 by the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, part of that year's National Defense Authorization Act, which set the 45-day advance-ballot-transmission requirement and tightened states' registration and absentee-ballot procedures for these voters.

The statute allows a state to seek an undue-hardship waiver from the Secretary of Defense under 52 U.S.c. § 20302(g) when the Deadline cannot be met. Lowdown's own calculation, working backward from South Carolina's compressed special-election calendar, finds the 45-day Deadline for the 11 August primary fell on 27 June and the Deadline for the 25 August runoff fell on 11 July, both before Lindsey Graham's death created the vacancy at all. That is a structural gap in how the statute interacts with a compressed timeline, not a confirmed violation: whether South Carolina sought or received a waiver remains unconfirmed.