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2008-10-24 Home Front: Politix
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ACORN, Yes! American Soldiers, No!
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ACORN, yes! American soldiers...not so much. That's the message from Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin to local members of the US military.
The same Secretary of State who has thus far refused to even investigate ACORN's activities here in Massachusetts--and who supports giving tax dollars to a group committing election fraud--won't do his job to protect the right to vote for men and women fighting for our nation abroad.
One of the problems uncovered during the 2000 Florida fiasco is that American military personnel deployed abroad often don't get their chance to vote. Ballots arrive too late, aren't processed when they return, are disqualified on technical grounds without the soldiers ever knowing, etc. So Congress passed a law in 2002 mandating that election officials like Secretary of State Galvin track track how many soldiers and overseas voters request a ballot, have one sent to them, and how many come back and are actually counted.
Continued from Page 6
Pretty basic stuff, for a very profound cause: protecting the right to vote of people getting shot at while defending ours. But Bill Galvin told the soldiers to get stuffed. Galvin refused to obey the law and make sure Massachusetts military members got their ballots and had their votes counted.
Think there were any guys in Iraq who wanted to vote on Bush vs. Kerry in 2004? Well, tough luck if they lived in Massachusetts. Galvin refused to to his job. The 2006 Congressional election? Same thing. Guys who may have wanted to vote against "Surrender Now!" Massachusetts congressman James McGovern never got the chance.
And that, of course, is the point. Secretary of State Bill Galvin can read the polls. He knows that about 70% of the military vote will go to John McCain. He knows that people willing to put their lives on the line for the USA also tend to vote Republican more than their Cambridge neighbors here in Massachusetts.
So Bill Galvin, who will fight to the death to make sure a "voter" who can't even read the ballot unless its written in Portuguese gets a vote, violated federal law rather than make sure an American soldier serving in Baghdad gets his ballot.
This is the kind of voter Bill Galvin is disenfranchising: "I just gave John McCain my Purple Heart," Marine Sgt. Jack Eubanks told me a few minutes after McCain finished a speech at a campaign rally in Woodbridge, Virginia Saturday. "I said, 'I want to give this to you, sir, as a reminder that we want you to keep your promise to bring us home in victory and honor, so it will mean something. We fought over there, and we want it to mean something," Eubanks continued. We don't want to come back and it just be all for nothing."
Bill Galvin is treating our soldiers the same way segregationist election officials treated black voters in the Jim Crow South. If you think that's an exaggeration, read the consent order Galvin was forced to sign. Massachusetts is now going to have federal election officials overseeing our treatment of military voters...just like Alabama had overseeing their treatment of black voters 40 years ago.
The people of Massachusetts elected this anti-military moron. Is this really how we want our soldiers treated?
...and it took the feds to make him cave.
WASHINGTON, Oct 22, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The Justice Department announced today that it has reached a settlement agreement with Massachusetts Secretary of State William Francis Galvin, to remedy violations of the Uniformed Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). UOCAVA is designed to ensure that uniformed military members and overseas citizens can effectively participate in federal elections. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, through its Secretary of State, is responsible for collecting and reporting the number of military voters and overseas citizens who are sent ballots, who return ballots, and who have the ballots successfully cast in each federal general election. Massachusetts has failed to fulfill this important legal obligation since UOCAVA was enacted in 2002.
"Accurate and complete information about whether our uniformed service members and overseas citizens are being given an effective opportunity to have their votes counted is essential to our democratic system of government," said Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "Without it, Congress and the public cannot determine whether states are fulfilling their obligations to let uniformed service members and overseas citizens fully participate in our elections. We are pleased with Secretary of State Galvin's cooperation and with Massachusetts's recognition of the importance of these reporting requirements."
The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) report is published every two years and provides data for every state and jurisdiction in the country about how many absentee ballots were transmitted to UOCAVA voters, how many were returned, and how many were cast in federal general elections. The settlement agreement requires the Secretary of State to implement procedures to facilitate the collection and reporting of data regarding absentee ballots transmitted, returned and cast by overseas citizens, including members of the armed forces casting absentee ballots.
UOCAVA specifically mandates that States and local governments report to the EAC the combined number of absentee ballots that are transmitted to absent uniformed services voters and overseas voters for the election and the combined number of such ballots which were returned by such voters and cast in the election. The State (or Commonwealth) must do so no later than 90 days after the date of each regularly scheduled general election for federal office. The States must also make such a report available to the general public. The Justice Department has the authority to bring an action to enforce compliance by the States. 
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Posted by tu3031 2008-10-24 09:58||
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Posted by bman 2008-10-24 11:34||
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Posted by Cornsilk Blondie 2008-10-24 13:12||
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Posted by tu3031 2008-10-24 14:12||
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