Sorry if this has been diaried but this is a freaking disasater. In Fort Dobson I have watched thousands of soldiers ship out to Iraq and Afghanistan from Fort Carson and reading the following made me sick:
The Associated Press
SOME GI VOTES UNCOUNTED
70 PRESENT OF OVERSEAS BALLOTS UNCOUNTED IN '06
wtf? 70 PERCENT!!! Sorry to scream but this is an outrage.
It goes on to detail the issues - these are absentee ballots, the are sent US postal service, the turnaround time versus the time from ballots being available.
This is an outrage - this is:
If you have freedom, thank a soldier.
Just don't let him vote.
Military.com article on this
Digg on this
More below:
The big problem here is that the normal cycle time for military overseas voting appears to be 60 days - up to thirty days to deliver, then give them a couple days to fill out and then US Mail back.
The article also indicated that the Pentagon already admits this will not be corrected for the 2006 election. Want to bet? Don't forget we are seeing a 6 to 1 ratio in favor of Obama for enlisted military donations.
Ok, so the US posat office doesn't work. Let's fix this.
The Obama campaign should go to every state that has NOT mailed out their absentee ballot yet - and I mean be camping on their door at 6:30 AM tomorrow morning. They should also ask the McCain campaign to be there with them. They should volunteer to provide FedEx shipping of all absentee ballots on a basis agreed to with the regular army base commander in the area or with the adjuntant general of the state guard or reserve to the duty locations of the soldiers. It could be multiple locations but so what - even if there are only 5 soldiers at a location that would be less than $20 per vote - don't these people in harms way deserve that help?
Provide a FedEx return packet and payment with the ballots. Provide an instruction list for the base commander where the soldiers are dployed on how to gather, repackage, contact FedEx and return votes. I bet there is a JO on each base location that already has responsibility for checking the absentee voting compliance list. You made a lot of JO offciers very happy.
These soldiers deserve the right to vote on who will be possibly sending them into battle. They deserve that right more than anyone else.
I have contributed to a lot of things - anyone know how I can organize the "Airlift a vote to a soldier" website to get the money for this?