Rep. Roy Blunt, the House Republican whip, on July 8 introduced a resolution demanding that the Defense Department better enable U.S. military personnel overseas to vote in the November elections. That act was followed by silence. Democrats normally leap on an opportunity to find fault with the Bush Pentagon. But not a single Democrat joined Blunt as a co-sponsor, and an all-Republican proposal cannot pass in the Democratic-controlled House.
Analysis by the federal Election Assistance Commission, rejecting inflated Defense Department voting claims, estimated overseas and absentee military voting for the 2006 midterm elections at a disgracefully low 5.5 percent. The quality of voting statistics is so poor that there is no way to tell how many of the slightly over 330,000 votes actually were sent in by the absentee military voters and their dependents and how many by civilian Americans living abroad -- 6 million all total.
Nobody who has studied the question objectively sees any improvement since 2006, and that is a scandal. Retired U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Charles Henry wrote in the July issue of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings: "While virtually everyone involved ... seems to agree that military people deserve at least equal opportunity when it comes to having their votes counted, indications are that in November 2008, many thousands of service members who try to vote will do so in vain." Henry, now an independent broadcast journalist, has personal experience with this enduring scandal. While serving as a Marine at sea off Iran, he received his 1980 presidential ballot too late to count. President Harry Truman said of troops fighting in Korea, "The least we at home can do is to make sure that they are able to enjoy the rights they are being asked to fight to preserve." But the U.S. military that has so perfected the art of war over the past half-century is at a loss to enable soldiers to vote.
A combat officer has enough to do without handling the votes of troopers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Defense Department Inspector General's report in March last year recommended "appointment of civilian personnel" as "voting assistance officers." The Pentagon brass rejected the idea. I reported four years ago that the problems of 2000 overseas military voting had not been corrected for the 2004 presidential election. At that time, Under Secretary of Defense David Chu was put in charge of the problem. During massive turnover at the Pentagon, Chu remains in place -- best known among critics of the military vote problem for his chronic failure to return telephone calls.
Congressional attention to the problem has been scattered and limited mostly to Republicans such as Sen. John Cornyn, who earlier this year decried "a lack of will" at the Pentagon to solve the voting problem. Democratic interest about tackling the problem might be tempered by apprehension that soldiers will cast too many Republican votes. Nevertheless, at least one prominent Democrat -- House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer -- described himself to me as eager to deal with this problem. (Hoyer's home state of Maryland is one of the worst offenders, with ballots of only 4.1 percent of overseas voters counted in 2006.) Hoyer and Blunt, who have become friendly adversaries in a bitterly partisan Congress, conferred several weeks ago and agreed in principle on co-sponsoring a resolution aimed at getting the Defense Department moving.
Hoyer wanted the resolution to cover expatriate Americans as well as the military, and Blunt did not object. They turned the issue over to their staffers and went about the business of major legislation. Blunt had instructed his staff to seek agreement with Democrats but, if not, to introduce a resolution applying only to the military, which was the outcome. One presidential staffer who is familiar with the situation privately dismisses the Pentagon bureaucrats as "hopeless." In a lame-duck administration counting the days before a troubled eight years finally end, American fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan deprived of their right to vote constitute the least of White House worries.
#2
Except for those the MSM finds to quote in their 'news' articles, Grom.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/24/2008 6:21 Comments ||
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#3
And the worst thing is, they are fighting and dying so that people (here and there) can vote.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/24/2008 6:22 Comments ||
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#4
But the U.S. military that has so perfected the art of war over the past half-century is at a loss to enable soldiers to vote.
Bull@hit. The US military has THOUSANDS of people every election year who work their backsides off to insure the troops know when and how to vote (Believe me - it's a metric, and the Higher-ups DO keep track of this stuff.) It's the party-controlled voting agencies back home that do everything in their power to keep the people who defend freedom from enjoying it.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/24/2008 6:34 Comments ||
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#5
That party is just plain evil. EVIL.
Democrats will do anything but the right thing.
It is a party of sell outs and liars. There is nothing more racist, sexist, arrogant, two faced, hysterical, stupid, ignorant, or empty than a democrat in this time.
I think I will drift away from the US now. None of youse are making any sense at all anymore.
That criminal media empire and their coffers are setting up the downfall.
Such a shame to lose the only sane nation on the planet. hmm, what to do?
Get the groups that send care packages to the troops to enclose absentee ballots to the units from specific states. That is what I will work on here in New York and I will press for our other state coordinators to do the same in their states. If we make up some generic stamps which can be filled in by the troops with Date, APO# and location that should bypass the postmark problem in years past. After that it is just a matter of the mail getting back to the US in time.
DanNY
NY State Coordinator
Gathering of Eagles
Posted by: DanNY ||
07/24/2008 8:07 Comments ||
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#7
If you think the Democrats give a bloody damn about the soldier vote, take a hard look at the length of time Obama spent on the ground and with troops in theater. And to top it off, he "Agrees to Disagree" with General Petreaus. Believe me, he knows the deal.
#8
IIRC, the Dems made a targeted effort in 2000 in Florida to challenge military adsentee ballots. The ballots were inspected for any minute blemishes or marks on the ballots and then some high priced lawyers would argue that this was a "spoiled ballot" that shouldn't be counted.
Mayor Daly of Chicago was in charge of the effort.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
07/24/2008 11:27 Comments ||
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#9
They don't give a shit about people who may vote republican. They're too busy trying to get convicted felons the right to vote from prison.
#10
Unit Voting Officer. Been there, seen it, done it. You can't make them vote, but you can certainly make sure there's nothing on the DoD side that stopping the servicemember and that he/she has all the materials and gets what they need. Ask Mr. Gore about actions at the local level to obstruct it.
#11
The dems would do well to remember that members of the military are not their personal guards or slaves.
I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
(via No Quarter blog. Original Bild.de article is in German.)
It seems Barack Obama is up to his old control tricks even in countries he visits. So much for Foreign Relations and setting the example for Democracy. But the important thing is CNN and MSNBC wont have to stage their video shots when they show America how much The Plastic Jesus is totally worshipped in Europe during his Tour de Farce.
#4
What would we tell someone from germany that wanted to pull that shit here? We'd tell them to go f*ck themselves. The Germs need to straighten this guy out.
#7
Bet a beerox dinner he says something in German so that he is not embarassed.
Everything about this tour of doody in one paragraph. "All the worlds a stage, and the men and women merely backdrops." Should have just put his butt in front of a blue screen and played "The Last Unicorn" in the background.
A JAW-dropping political miracle may be on the horizon. No, I'm not talking about the second coming of the Obamessiah. I'm talking about the long-deserved comeuppance of troop-smearing, pork-feasting, scandal-tainted Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania.
The 18-term congressman's challenger, staunch conservative Republican newcomer William Russell, raised nearly $670,000 in the second quarter. Earmark king Murtha scraped together a measly $119,000.
Russell's underdog campaign bested Murtha without the perks of incumbency, national name recognition, big PAC donations or mainstream media support.
Even more amazing: The challenger, a Desert Storm veteran and Army reservist who survived the 9/11 Pentagon attack, wasn't even publicly campaigning during the quarter. Russell, 45, is on active duty with the Army until after Aug. 1 and is barred from actively campaigning until then. Rest at link.
Also consider supporting LtCol. Allen West for Congress
Posted by: ed ||
07/24/2008 09:25 ||
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#1
Murtha probably hasn't put the arm on his local pork recipients yet...
#2
The last time he ran, Murtha was so scared that he got two Democrat toadies to run in the open Republican primary, and told all his followers to vote for them. One of them won, then both dropped out of the race, leaving Murtha unopposed.
#4
Murtha is one fat, tired POS. Well past time to flush him down the shitter. How about their shiny new Sen. Casey ? What a lefty freak. Have Pennsy voters decided to try and become dumber than their Taxachusetts friends ?
#10
If there was intelligent life in his district, they'd be aware that Murtha has got to keel over soon enough of natural causes [although in the case of Senator Byrd, it appears the Donks are working hard on keeping the dead in office]. It's better to start your representative's seniority as soon as possible than be assure of the basement for a couple of decades behind other districts in America. Note well, that 'conservative' Donks have beat out 'liberal' Trunks this past year.
I met Yakov Marks during the Second Lebanon War. Yakov is an American oleh who has been living in the northern town of Maalot since the 1970's--during the war he showed me around Maalot, which came under heavy Hizbollah fire...
Today Yakov reveals what he knows about the murderer, Samir Kuntar, released least week by Israeli authorities.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
I met Yakov Marks during the Second Lebanon War. Yakov is an American oleh who has been living in the northern town of Maalot since the 1970's--during the war he showed me around Maalot, which came under heavy Hizbollah fire...
