New players are not granted permissions eventhough the oxide.usergroup add default easyvote.use command was entered.  The console says that it already has permissinons but noone is being added to it. Am I missing something?

 oxide.usergroup add default easyvote.use is not the correct command to grant a perm to a group. thats the one to add a player to a group and wrong syntax too.

What you need is:

o.grant group default easyvote.use