War Chief Counted The Troops Who Never Voted — Then Gave An ORDER

Soldier saluting before a large American flag — Photo: Shutterstock

On Friday, September 25, War Secretary Pete Hegseth put a number on the table that nobody in the Pentagon had said out loud: 300,000 American troops never registered to vote in 2024. “That’s more than the ballots cast in cities like Detroit, Boston, Milwaukee, or Seattle,” he said in a video posted to his official account. Then he told every commander in the force what to do about it before the midterms.

Story Snapshot

Hegseth released a video on September 25 urging troops and their families to register and vote.
He said 300,000 service members failed to register to vote in 2024.
Troops can use one federal postcard to register and request a ballot, or a write-in ballot if deployed.
Commanders were told to get their people registered but never to tell troops who to support.
The Pentagon’s top general confirmed no troops will be sent to polling places in 2026.

The Order To Commanders

The order was plain. “Get out the vote,” Hegseth told unit leaders, directing them to lead by example, help their people register, and spread the word down the chain. He drew the line himself: “You’re not telling ’em who to vote for, you just tell them to vote.” The chain of command exists to win wars, not pick candidates, and the video stuck to that: register, request a ballot, show up.

Hegseth framed the push as civic duty, not politics. “Every warrior deserves an opportunity to cast his or her ballot,” he said. Men and women who wear the uniform to defend the country’s freedoms deserve to exercise those same freedoms at the ballot box, no matter how far from home their orders send them. He has done this job before: as a young Army National Guard officer at Guantanamo Bay he was the unit’s voting assistance officer, helping troops register and get their ballots in.

How Troops Can Actually Cast a Ballot

Hegseth pointed every service member, spouse and eligible family member to the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s website, FVAP.gov. Troops can fill out a Federal Post Card Application, one simple form that both registers them to vote and requests their ballot no matter where they are stationed. Federal law already guarantees this absentee right to anyone serving far from home.

If a deployed troop’s regular ballot gets stuck in the mail, federal law provides a backup called the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot. This form lets a service member vote even when overseas mail delays threaten to silence them. Hegseth’s message made clear this isn’t red tape — it’s a legal right built so deployment never costs a warfighter a voice in his own country’s elections.

Critics Cry Foul Despite No Evidence of Political Steering

Some outlets tried to twist a get-out-the-vote push into a partisan scheme, with one report calling it a “veiled order” to vote Republican because the four cities he named lean Democrat. Another accused him of “politicizing” military voting simply for mentioning them. Nothing in the reporting shows Hegseth telling a single soldier which candidate or party deserves a vote — only that he wants the 300,000 who stayed home in 2024 to show up this time.

NEWS: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is urging service members, military families and overseas voters to register and request ballots ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms, pointing them to the Pentagon’s Federal Voting Assistance Program at https://t.co/lQ7OshjNjI. FVAP is the…

— MDBayNews (@MDBayNews) September 25, 2026

Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin pressed Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine to promise the military would stay out of Election Day operations entirely. General Caine responded in writing that the Joint Force “has no plans” to send federal troops or federalized National Guard members to any polling place during the 2026 midterms. That written answer should put to rest any fear that a routine voter-registration reminder is somehow a prelude to military overreach at the ballot box.