This isn't just a Texas problem obviously. And pardon me if it's been diaried recently but the story I'm linking to is a new one from the Houston Chronicle. The sad details below....
http://www.chron.com/...
The Houston Chronicle is reporting that the two Texas Republican senators have been receiving complaints from constituents that Texas soldiers are having trouble voting while on duty abroad. It's not necessarily a voter suppression issue - in some cases, it's a logistics issue.
But here is the significant problem in a nutshell. According to the story,
A post-election survey by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in 2006 showed that just 992,000 absentee ballots had been requested by the estimated 6 million eligible military service personnel and U.S. citizens living overseas. Of those, 330,000 ballots were actually returned and counted by local elections officials.
One of the comments by a reader following the story is striking...
President Bush is a Republican, and he is also "Commander in Chief" of the U.S. military. Defense Secretary Gates is a Republican, appointed by President Bush.
I've been told by soldiers returning from Iraq that 60% to 70% of front-line troops are supporting Senator Obama. Yet, when they attempted to register to vote, senior commanders ordered that voter registration efforts be stopped on military bases. And now, soldiers and marines who are on the battlefield in Iraq and Afganistan are being prevented from voting.
This is the most shameful episode of the eight years that Americans have been abused by George Bush.
I'm incredulous that so few military members have voted in recent elections. It would be even more incredible if those 2006 numbers were repeated this year. I'm not suggesting intentional suppression - politicians on both sides of the political spectrum are quoted in this story that it's a logistical issue and the voting needs to be done electronically instead of by paper.
But the bottom line is our soldiers deserve to be able to vote if they want to exercise their constitutional right to do so. Even if these votes gave Republicans more votes than Democrats (and I don't think they would but it's hard to say for sure without some research data), these young men and women deserve to be heard.