Military Votes Being Tossed Again
"We support the troops" except when they vote Republican. That would appear to be the pattern again this presidential election, last perfected in 2000, and resurrected in 2008….
Fairfax County Registrar Rokey Suleman is disqualifying an overwhelming majority of the military federal write-in absentee ballots received in his county on the basis that no address had been given for those witnessing the voter signatures on the ballots. According to Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity and four former members of the military who held a press conference on Thursday, over 98 percent of these military absentee ballots in Fairfax County are being rejected.
“The federal write-in absentee ballot is a federally mandated ballot that allows military service members and their dependents to cast an absentee ballot when they haven’t received a [state] ballot before the election,” Herrity said. “For them it’s a safety net. It allows them to vote if the mail truck hasn’t reached his or her remote base in Iran or Afghanistan in time to cast a regular absentee ballot.”
When asked how many ballots had been rejected, Herrity responded, “Out of the 260 military federal write-in ballots received to date, only five included an address for the witness. The other 255 have been set aside for rejection.”
So here's how it stands today: we can toss out almost all of the votes submitted by those overseas fighting for our right to do so, while others do everything to protect groups who submit fraudulent voter registrations and votes.
Our priorities need work.
October 25th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Suleman, huh? The name says it all. This prick needs to be removed NOW! Him, and all like him who are trashing the military vote.
October 25th, 2008 at 9:42 am
This is the same tactics used by UhhhBama to get elected in Illinois when whe began his political career.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:06 am
It is my understanding from other sites that the local supervisor of elections went to the state for an opinion and that they declared the votes valid since he was making a wrong interpretation of the statute.
Story Link
October 25th, 2008 at 11:09 am
If this had not been reversed we would have had the situation that VA was going to have felons voting (contrary to their state law) and students in dorms allowed to vote but throw out military votes.
They had to defuse this but still the backlash can be a major effect in VA.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:15 am
In Florida the Dems disqualified military votes in 2004 by claiming they did not have a US Postal Service cancelation on them. Instead they had Army Postal cancelation stamps.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:28 am
That's the horrible thing about technicalities. And Obama has been shown to make them work for his behalf.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Too many military voters in VA to ignore this one. The local pols know that. If they don't make the military here happy, they can count on a short term of office left to them. There are plenty of good people on the case here, I expect a different result than what we saw happen in FLA. All the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Another reason given was no cancellation at all but there is an exception in federal law for no stamps needed from an active war zone that is declared.
Trouble is the Fl law did not have that written in to their statute.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
The Dems have fought tooth and nail every effort to assure military votes could arrive in a timely manner.
One bill would have allowed the services to bypass the slow snail mail route and send the stuff by independent carriers such as UPS or FEDEX which cuts the shipping time from the war zone to a fraction.
Otherwise the military can only mount a mission to gather all the votes into dedicated mail bags and fly them back themselves on return shuttles to the USA.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Even in a non war zone, imagine for example how long it takes for an absentee ballot to be sent from the USA to say South Korea where some body is stationed and the time to return the filled in ballot back to the USA.
It can almost close down the entire voting window for some locations.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I have been cut out of voting myself in the past when I was in the service.
I was stationed on a fast attack submarine out of Pearl Harbor and applied for an absentee ballot.
Trouble is we made a transit to Japan for a pit stop and then headed out for about 90 days at sea submerged on an operation.
Since the ballot had to go to my home state and then back to Pearl and then be bounced to Japan where our port call was, I did not get the ballot the first stop there to be able to fill it out and send it back and finally got the ballot when we pulled back in to Japan after the operation but it was already to late to postmark and submit the ballot for the election. The last eligible date had already passed.
October 25th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
As we get closer and closer to November I see myself less willing to go through the whole waiver process for a reenlistment in the Marines. If I didn't love the service so much I wouldn't even be able to consider being on Active Duty under an Obama presidency.
Then again, I might not have the option. Our beloved Corps is only protected by a few national acts and those are just paper.
November 3rd, 2008 at 7:28 am
How many people plan to vote for Obama just to 'punish' the Republicans?…
Are you thinking that the Republican party should have nominated a 'real conservative'? Lots of people over the years have lamented that John McCain has 'played nice' with legislators on the other side of the aisle too often. …
November 5th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
[...] by claiming they did not have a US Postal … Too many military voters in VA to ignore this one. Military Votes Being Tossed Again | Black & Right Points 2 & 3. CLEVELAND – Volunteers supporting Barack Obama picked up hundreds of people at [...]