Even More Military Voters Likely to Be Disenfranchised(Democrats Abroad drive to win votes overseas)

John Kerry is fond of touting the number of people who attend his campaign events and likes to crack, "And that's not a Katherine Harris count."

But Kerry and other Democrats never mention when they whine about the 2000 election that ballots from America's military -- 75 percent of whom vote Republican -- were disqualified in greater numbers than ever before in history.

Unfortunately, things aren't looking any better for the disenfranchised military voters this year, Human Events reports.

An Internet absentee voting system was cancelled due to security concerns. And it takes sometimes up to four months for our servicemen and women to receive their mail.

After interviewing 127 servicemen in Afghanistan, the General Accounting Office released a report.

"Nearly half said that they waited more than four weeks to get their mail, and many commented that some mail took as long as four months to work its way through the system."

Much of the mail was just plain lost and at least 80 percent told the GAO they knew of some mail they never received at all. A GAO test affirmed those claims.

Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) wrote to Donald Rumsfeld complaining, "Military absentee ballots that are lost, incorrectly completed or delivered past local election deadlines disenfranchise the military voter."

And the senator's communications director, Rob Ostrander, said, "There doesn't seem to be the sense of urgency within the bureaucracy that is needed to address these problems quickly."

Worse, retired Rear Adm. Jim Carey, a former Federal Maritime Commission chairman and current National Defense Committee chairman, says "Given the sluggish military mail system that the GAO has described in its report, and with the increased military deployments to ever-more remote locations such as Iraq and Afghanistan, it's pretty obvious to me that even fewer servicemen will be able to vote this year than were able to in 2000."

Carey also criticized the cancellation of Internet voting, claiming "Both military and civilian organizations, governments and embassies, now routinely send sensitive electronic messages in a secure manner."

CNET reported back in Feb.05 an official, who requested anonymity, claimed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had made the decision to scrap the system because Pentagon officials could not 'assure the legitimacy of votes that would be cast.' Computer security experts in January reviewed the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE, urged the Pentagon to scrap the system, saying it was too vulnerable." Panel experts recommended Dept.of Defense cancel its Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (Serve), designed to carry 100,000 overseas votes a prototype eventually handling 6m votes.

A Seattle-area company that develops electronic voting technology, VoteHere Inc., had claimed it could keep the system secure and then someone hacked into VoteHere's own computers.

A conflicting report by the British government's Computer and Electronic Security Group (CESG)is saying, the arm of GCHQ responsible for information assurance. After assessing the technology used in last year's large-scale e-voting pilots, the group found "a lot of risks out there" but concluded that "we feel that it is possible for ballots to be kept secret and that a reliable and secure means of collecting, counting and auditing the votes can be devised".

The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) requires "states to allow uniformed services voters and other overseas citizens to register to vote and vote absentee for all elections for federal office." The Department of Justice has brought numerous suits under this law to ensure that overseas voters are not deprived of an opportunity to vote due to late mailing by election officials.

The Boston.com News reports: "A sign on the door of a popular English-language bookstore cafe in downtown Prague urges Americans living in the Czech capital to come in, register to vote, and help ''Re-Defeat Bush."

Democrats Abroad, active in over 37 countries and an official branch of the Democratic Party will send voting delegates to the party's Boston convention. The DA has held high-profile voter registration drives and hopes to capitalize on perceived anger against Bush.Democrats Abroad is setting up a branch in Iraq under the slogan "Donkeys in the Desert".

GOP officials, report a 70 percent increase in requests for overseas voter assistance, and said, "Historically, we have owned this vote."

Americans living abroard estimates range from 4 million to 6 million.

Email to Senators Frist and Alexander (Tennessee)

Another election is approaching, and along with it another attempt to disenfranchise overseas voters, especially those in the military. This shameful denial of our most basic freedom for partisan purposes, as was successfully perpetrated in Florida and many other locations in the last two national elections, MUST be curbed!

Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coast guard are risking their lives to preserve our freedom, and we owe them the same right that they are fighting and dying to protect.

I hate to see excessive federal meddling in local affairs, but protecting this right for these citizens is and ought to be a primary responsibility of the government that sent them to these remote lands.

Interfering with the vote of another citizen, either by deliberate action or through negligence, ought to be a serious enough felony that the lackadaisical attitudes of the military mail handlers and voting officers at military bases and field locations will be corrected.

I hope to see action on this in time for this election.

I've voted Military Absentee since 1972, every year except for 3 years when I was stationed in my home state (I vote in Presidential, Congressional and all local elections, so I usually vote every year, sometimes twice a year). The only election I received a ballot really late was in 1992, I was deployed on the USS INDEPENDENCE (CV-62) in the Persian Gulf. What always bothered me is that I never really knew if my vote was counted or not. When I voted in person, I knew that my vote was registered. I voted in VA from Guam last Nov03 and will be voting in VA again this fall from Guam. Letter mail takes about 10-14 days from here, packages up to 3 months. I used to vote absentee to NJ, but now VA is my home state. Semper Fidelis.

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