Military Voting Rights Cheapened And Threatened

From A Charging Elephant:

Military Voting Rights and Me


August 2, 2010 · 2 Comments

nooneofanyimport

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L Szugyi

I voted by absentee ballot for about fourteen years. My husband still votes absentee. When we were overseas, we certainly noticed that our ballots arrived disturbingly close to election date. Mayyybe they arrived in time, mayyybe they didn’t. We’ll never know.



I read the well-written piece by J. Christian Adams a couple days ago. I was a touched by his heartfelt passion for protecting the voting rights of those who protect the country. But as soon as I finished the article, I forgot about the issue.







Then, I read Eric Eversole’s piece on the same subject and thought, I really should be enraged by this. By the possibility that our votes have not counted.



Here are these two guys, basically confirming what my husband and I have always cynically assumed: our absentee ballots have a substantial chance of being useless.



Well, I suppose that is why I am not enraged: I am not surprised.



Old. News.





My husband has said for some time, well, look at the way the military absentee vote was treated by Al Gore back in 2000. And he has a point. Apparently, Gore-hired attorney Mark Herron sent a memo to thousands of Democratic poll workers, advising them how to disqualify absentee ballots. Apparently, this led to roughly 40% of the military absentee ballots being thrown out in Florida.



The military vote is largely Republican, so it stands to reason that the military vote is something the left will avoid, if possible. I tried to find a left-leaning group that mentions the difficulty of military absentee voting, and I found nothing. (Well, technically I did find a reflexive jerk by Media Matters: Adam’s claim is false! It’s not based on evidence!)



The only votes the left is concerned about are those that elect lefty statists.



I did find a nice blurb on the ACLU website:



“The right to vote is the foundation of our democracy, yet onerous requirements and extensive administrative problems with our country’s voter registration system have disfranchised millions of voters.”



Onerous requirements and extensive administrative problems definitely exist for active duty folks stationed or deployed overseas. Alas, easing this burden is not part of ACLU’s activism.



The new Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act is supposed to help alleviate the onerous requirements and administrative problems of voting as an overseas military member. But, Adams and Eversole say that MOVE allows states to seek a waiver of the new requirements, and that the DOJ is not enforcing the law anyway.



Yawn.



Perhaps I am too cynical. Too used to not trusting bureaucracy. How can I expect that the DOJ bureaucracy will solve the bureaucratic problems of voting overseas from an FPO/APO address? And that is my feeling before we even get into the fact that a lefty administration is in office.



Just ‘cuz I’m cynical, doesn’t mean I’ve given up. Keep fighting the good fight, J. Christian Adams. Keep educating the masses, Semper America. And keep speaking truth to power, One Old Vet.



I’ll do what I can, too. For the first time in fifteen years, I have registered to vote at my current location. Instead of just absentee voting on major federal elections, I am voting on everything, from city elections to primaries.



To all Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines deployed right now:



Seek those absentee ballots as soon as you can. Start here, at the Federal Voting Assistance Program. Also, you should have a Voting Assistance Officer. Do you know who performs that collateral duty at your command?



In the meantime, please know that we civilians are waking up. We are now trying to look after our country’s governance while you are deployed. I know you have always trusted us to take care of everything while you are gone. From renewing cars tags, to taking care of the yard, your home, pets, and children. You are used to leaving it behind. We are finally trying to pick up the slack.



Hoo-ah, Fair Winds and Following Seas, and Semper Fi.