That’s the premise behind a $6.8 million research effort headed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that aims to develop technology that could change the voting game for troops stationed far from home and even deployed to remote locations.

Steve Trout, head of government partnerships for DARPA contractor VotingWorks, puts his vision more bluntly: “My goal is there’s a ballot cast from the International Space Station.”

VotingWorks and DARPA held a preview demonstration Feb. 7, with military representatives and state government officials in attendance, to show what a “first-class” military voting experience could look like.

The problem, as presenters outlined it, was clear: For troops and family members, voting looks and feels very different than it does for most Americans. They mail an absentee ballot that may look unlike the one used in their state or local voting region, and won’t get counted until an audit period some time after the projected winners have all been announced.

And that difference in experience and perception directly translates to voting participation: According to information presented by VotingWorks, military voters have an average turnout of 47%, compared to 74% for civilians. Polling data presented underscores the part that voting challenges play in nonparticipation.

Some 54% of surveyed military members who wanted to vote but didn’t said they had trouble requesting an absentee ballot, and another 43% said the ballot never arrived at all. Other reasons for not voting included a too-complicated voting process, difficulty with the mailing system, and trouble accessing their state’s election website.

The technology proposal from VotingWorks would change the game with portable one-stop voting stations, compact enough to fit in a big suitcase, that print a paper ballot just like the one corresponding to a service member’s local election and also generate a label for mailing that mallet to the correct polling center, all the way up until the night of the election.

An end-to-end encrypted electronic version of the ballot is then immediately transmitted to the local election center for counting, while the paper version follows in the mail, allowing the hard copy to be verified within the three-to-four week audit window following an election.

In this scenario, the process is all enabled through the service member’s military common access card, or CAC, which verifies their identity, thereby sidestepping the most challenging problem standing in the way of large-scale electronic voting.

VotingWorks leaders are quick to stress that they’re not trying to develop an internet-based voting system. Nor, they say, are they working to solve civilian absentee voting problems.

“We are explicitly not trying to use military voting as a jumping-off point for broad internet voting,” said Ben Adida, executive director of VotingWorks. “We have aspects of our design that are only going to work for the military, and we’re 100% okay with that.”

While the effort is still in a research phase, company leaders at the end of the year want to present DARPA with a working prototype and open-source design code “so anybody can take it and go from there,” Adida said. While plans are not yet final, limited-scope pilot programs may be rolled out in 2025 to test the usefulness of the technology.

Dan Wallach, program manager for the DARPA Innovation Office, said in 2025, after the close of the 2024 presidential election cycle, will present more opportunities for trial and experimentation.

“You don’t roll out new things in a high turnout, high-stakes election,” he said. “When we’re voting for the dog-catcher, that’s when you try the new stuff.”

The innovation behind the current proposal is a dual-track system in which the voting stations, consisting of a terminal and printers for ballots and mailing labels, are distributed across military bases and deployed environments.

After securely identifying a military voter via their CAC card, the stations dispense a paper ballot, which can be filled out and mailed using the label. Ballots also are scanned electronically, allowing the encrypted votes to be instantly and securely transmitted to polling places and counted with those of local voters.

The military voter’s paper ballot will arrive after the election, but in time to be included in the vote audit, which verifies election results and can take up to four weeks after an election to complete.

To work well, the voting stations will need to be secure enough that theft or breach of a station won’t result in a compromise of ballots or voter data, and able to function with minimal internet connectivity ― while electronic transmission will be necessary to send votes, the stations need to be able to print the right local ballots and mailing labels for any military voter while offline. That’s all in the design specifications, Adida said.

“We’re going to try to do it with the minimum amount of internet and the minimum amount of cell service, sporadically,” Adida said. “Maybe at one base, you don’t have an internet connection, but maybe you can write some USB sticks and get them transported to a base that does have internet.”

Christy McCormick, the chairwoman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, expressed skepticism that the system would work as advertised.

“I was tasked with getting election results back to the Pentagon as part of my job when I was in Iraq, and we couldn’t even use CAC cards,” she said. “So there’s some huge hurdles here in these countries, especially war zones, where you’re not going to have a place to put that machine.”

McCormick, who was stationed in Iraq from 2009–2010 as an elections expert with the Department of Justice, told Military Times after the presentation that she was hopeful about the new project, but aware of the extensive collaboration from federal agencies and the Defense Department that would be needed to make such a proposal successful.

“It’s always worth the attempt,” she said, “And I hope that they can get those issues worked out, that we can enfranchise more of our overseas population.”

Wallach, of DARPA, said a combination of new and maturing technology and the narrow scope of the effort

“There’s been a lot of research on electronic voting and security over the past few decades that this program has drawn on,” Wallach said, adding that the relatively new post-election risk-limiting audit process and advances in encryption all helped to make a better military voting solution practical.

“There are a bunch of things that are very recent,” he said, “And putting them together is what’s novel.”

While these measures were evidence of increased scrutiny over military aid, and a growing ability to track and monitor donated gear as the war wears on, an obtained early report illustrates the severe limitations of early accountability measures, and how much Americans officials trust their Ukrainian counterparts to self-police.

A redacted version of the IG’s first accountability report, released to Military Times in response to a public records request, paints a picture of just how little was known in the early days of the war, which began with Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Dated Oct. 6, 2022, the 21-page report assesses “The DoD’s Accountability of Equipment Provided to Ukraine,” purchased out of what was then $23 billion in regular and supplemental appropriations for security assistance.

The evaluation covers the start of the war through September 2022.

“During the evaluation, we found that the DoD was unable to provide end-use monitoring (EUM} in accordance with DoD policy because of limited U.S. presence in Ukraine,” the report states. “Therefore, we are issuing this report identifying the challenges faced by DoD personnel responsible for conducting EUM and Enhanced EUM when there are limited or no U.S. personnel present in the area the equipment is being used.”

EUM, according to 1996 federal law, requires regular in-person visits to partner-nation installations, while Enhanced EUM, for sensitive defense items, includes serial-number inventories of all items, as well as in-person assessments of storage facilities.

Unable to perform those measures due to a closed U.S. Embassy in Kyiv and a cap on the number of U.S. personnel allowed in country, U.S. European Command attempted to monitor gear by requesting and storing physical “hand receipts” for gear, using automated tracking where possible, asking the Ukrainian government for information about gear accountability and tracking intelligence reporting on where gear ended up.

Even these secondary measures were incomplete: the inspector general got reports about a U.S. diplomatic note issued to the Ukrainian armed forces asking for copies of the receipts but was unable to obtain a copy of the note or the receipts. The report stated it would pursue the matter in a later report focused on chain-of-custody records for gear.

“[EUCOM] J-5 personnel stated that Ukraine is making a good-faith effort to provide equipment hand receipts and updates on the status and location of provided equipment,” the report stated.

A member of the nonprofit Special Operations Association of America who made multiple trips to Ukraine in 2022, spending months on the ground helping to deliver and distribute aid as a civilian, said he found that statement to be true, adding that Ukrainian officials’ awareness of the country’s reputation for corruption drove an internal push to demonstrate accountability and trustworthiness.

That said, he added, smaller items, not as easily identified as U.S. military donations, often did go astray.

“What I found was a bifurcated system of accountability that favored end items, or things that could publicly come back and look really negative,” the SOAA member, who asked not to be identified by name, told Military Times.

He mentioned Stinger and Javelin missiles and artillery components as examples of gear for which he received accounts of a painstaking accountability process. That process, he said, included tracking serial numbers and taking pictures of empty missile tubes and doing one-for-one swaps with resupply.

“With Javelins and Stingers, it was so cumbersome that it almost negatively impacted combat operations,” he said.

The Ukrainian forces he encountered, he said, were keenly aware that having one of these weapons end up in the hands of a nefarious actor could create “catastrophic effects,” harming public perception and the flow of aid from the United States.

“That is very different from what I saw with lower-end items,” he said, citing gear like first-aid pouches, boots and small arms.

With those items smaller in size and value, he said, concerns over the consequences of loss or pilfering were much lower and therefore more likely to go astray at checkpoints on their way to the front.

While Defense Department officials have emphasized their intensified efforts to track gear, with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl telling the House Armed Services Committee in February they were employing mechanisms “that go above and beyond our standard practices,” these methods still rely heavily on Ukrainian forces.

Kahl said at the hearing that the U.S. has given the Ukrainians scanners and tracking software but added that American officials do conduct remote site visits as they’re able. While congressional scrutiny over the growing tally of military support to Ukraine remains high, the reports of malfeasance that have surfaced have largely come from the country’s own intelligence service, the SBU.

The report cites a handful of events in June 2022 and August 2022, all of which had been featured in prior news stories about criminal heists involving the theft of small arms, ammunition and ballistic vests. SBU dismantled, disrupted and reported each of the schemes.

Many inspector general accountability probes have yet to publish results, and calls for greater accountability measures remain strident from within Congress and from critics of government waste.

The DoD IG’s announcement was for an evaluation to determine whether DoD elements were “effectively accounting for defense materials being provided to Ukraine from their points of origin to seaports of embarkation within the continental United States.”

That evaluation will be completed through interviews and site visits to U.S. Transportation Command and U.S.-based sea ports, assessing the integrity of supply lines to Ukraine before gear even leaves the country.

The office announced an “evaluation of land-based security controls” earlier that month for equipment being transported to Ukraine by cargo train. That followed a project announcement regarding DoD’s accountability processes for tracking equipment lost or destroyed after being delivered to Ukraine ― and an April one regarding “Security Assistance Group-Ukraine’s management, tracking, and coordination of the movement of U.S. defense articles to Ukraine.”

Released projects include a June evaluation of accountability controls transferred to Ukraine via air, which found that incomplete manifests diminished confidence in gear inventories for items flown out of Jasionka, Poland.

The SOAA member suggested the Defense Department could invest more deeply in public-private partnerships with American nonprofit organizations with International Traffic in Arms Regulations certifications to help ensure equipment makes the final mile and reaches the intended end user.

“There’s a huge past performance in some of these organizations,” he said, citing SOAA and Save Our Allies, another veteran-run organization that has had a presence on the ground in Ukraine since the invasion began. “They’re here. They’re able to transport these things and work with the Ukrainians.”

Former Lt. Andrew Chabrol secured above-ground burial for himself in the nation’s most revered veterans’ cemetery while awaiting his execution by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1993 for the murder of Petty Officer 2nd Class Melissa Harrington.

At the time, the Navy simply did not have legal grounds for excluding him, since he’d completed his service honorably. But in early 2019, a small group of veterans, including her husband, spoke out, telling this reporter in a story for the Washington Post about the lasting trauma of Chabrol’s crimes and how disturbed they were by his repose in Arlington.

Now, they say, Harrington is getting a measure of justice long denied to her.

Passed in December 2022 in the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act was a provision introduced by outgoing Rep. Jackie Speier, R-California, that requires the secretary of the Army to remove Chabrol from Arlington by Sept. 30 and transfer his remains to next-of-kin. Or, if no one responds to the Army’s request, to dispose of the remains as deemed appropriate.

An earlier version of the provision would have given the Army and Department of Veterans Affairs, who administer Arlington and U.S. veterans cemetery issues, authority to review other cases in which veterans had committed capital crimes. Ultimately, though, Congress opted to keep the change specific to Chabrol’s case.

“It was appalling to me to think that an officer in the Navy could sexually harass, then kidnap, then rape, and then murder a sailor and get buried at a national cemetery, which is supposed to honor our war heroes and our dead,” Speier told the Post in a June 2022 interview. “So he has no place in that cemetery.”

Judi Farmer, a retired Navy senior chief petty officer who began agitating for Chabrol’s removal from Arlington after learning about the case in 2018, told Navy Times that the disinterment would bring solace and relief, not just for those who knew and loved Harrington, but also for sailors who’ve sustained sexual assaults or trauma while serving.

“I think that, especially for those of us who are [military sexual trauma] survivors, it provides a little bit of comfort that justice is served; that she wasn’t forgotten,” Farmer said. “And that in the end, the military and our representatives do the right thing.”

Farmer said she was interested to learn about the timing and circumstances of Chabrol’s pending removal in hopes of marking the occasion, respectfully and with a few of Harrington’s loved ones, at her graveside in Norfolk, Virginia. The exact date of the disinterment, however, is likely to be kept private.

John Harlow, Arlington National Cemetery’s media relations officer, told Navy Times via email that the cemetery would schedule the disinterment after coordinating with Chabrol’s family members. When the removal took place, he said, it would not be open to the public.

“The disinterment of human remains is a private family matter and is handled in a dignified manner without ceremonial elements,” he said.

‘Beyond redemption’

The circumstances of Chabrol’s crimes are chilling.

Harrington, just 27 at the time of her death, had complained to Navy superiors about Chabrol’s intimidating behavior when the two served together in a Virginia Beach unit. The 34-year-old officer was allowed to complete his term of service and leave the Navy.

But in 1991, he kidnapped her from her home, bringing her to his own house, where he and an accomplice raped and tortured her. When she managed to free one of her bound hands and hit Chabrol, he “went berserk,” according to his own testimony, and strangled her to death.

Chabrol was quickly arrested after Harrington’s disappearance, and her body was discovered rolled into a rug inside his home. Court testimony would reveal that he had been plotting “revenge” against Harrington for months in a journal, calling his sick plan “Operation Nemesis.”

When death-row chaplain Russ Ford encountered Chabrol in prison, he described him as “fundamentally evil and beyond redemption,” according to a memoir out in March. Ford also describes the foul satisfaction Chabrol got from securing a burial spot in Arlington.

“The national honor elated the demoniac,” Ford wrote. “This monster would rest among heroes.”

Joe Harrington, Melissa Harrington’s widowed husband and a Navy veteran himself, said telling her story publicly had been difficult

“It’s amazing,” he said. “I really did not think that this was something that would go to that level, that people would take task on it and make it happen.”

Joe Harrington said he felt especially thankful to Farmer, who acted to right what she saw as an injustice even though she’d never known Melissa Harrington.

“I’m looking forward to going to Arlington later this year to visit my friends after I know that [Chabrol is] gone,” Joe Harrington said. “Just to have that feeling of, hey, this is the place to honor the folks that are here. So that’s good.”

For her part, Farmer said advocating for victims and seeking justice will continue to be a motivating cause for her.

“Andrew [Chabrol] felt that it was his last act of thumbing his nose at [Melissa Harrington] to be buried in Arlington,” she said. “So it’s nice for her to get the last word.”