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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. …

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Then again, I might not have the option. Our beloved Corps is only protected by a few national acts and those are just paper.

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.

It can almost close down the entire voting window for some locations.

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.

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.

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.

They had to defuse this but still the backlash can be a major effect in VA.

I’ve been in contact with the Fairfax County Registrar, Rokey Fulman, and he accepted my recommendation to contact the Virginia State Board of Elections to confirm this interpretation of the Virginia statute, as Sam’s letter points out the Fairfax interpretation is likely incorrect. I’m happy to report that he has received guidance from the State Board of Elections that the witness name and signature requirement do indeed only apply if the FWAB is also being used simultaneously as an absentee ballot application. Therefore, so long as a Federal Post Card Application is received by election day, the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot will count, which is the normal process for military absentee ballots to be cast.

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