Lost in all the Republican efforts to suppress the vote by attacking absentee and mail-in voting is one of the biggest blocs of absentee voters there is: the military. We know Donald Trump already thinks they're suckers and losers, but is the Republican Party setting itself up to disenfranchise those troops they've supposedly been so avidly supporting all these years? Will they be happy to see their late-arriving ballots to be tossed?
Fully 20% of the absentee ballots cast in Florida in 2016 were military ballots, and advocates there and around the country are raising the alarm that the pandemic, the chaos caused by Louis DeJoy's sabotage at the U.S. Postal Service, and the political fighting over absentee ballots could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of military voters. “We’ve seen in the past, obviously Florida is the key example, that it can come down to a single state and not very many votes,” Jack Noland, a researcher for Count Every Hero, a nonpartisan military voting advocacy group, told McClatchy. “It is not out of the realm of possibility, at all, that some of these statewide or down-ballot races could be determined by overseas and military voters.”
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More than a quarter of a million of active duty forces voted absentee in 2016, "50,000 of those ballots were cast in Florida, almost 33,000 in Washington state and 20,000 in Texas." Those states' military bases tend to be the permanent address for many active duty members, because they don't have state income taxes. But the concentration of these votes in Florida, and this year Texas, "really can impact a close election in one state, and give them outside power that when distributed they wouldn't normally have," said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president of the nonpartisan U.S. Vote Foundation and Overseas Vote. As of one week ago, nearly 48,000 absentee military ballots have been returned, about 15,000 more than had been returned the same time last presidential cycle.
Some of the service members who were burned by the 2000 election, when the vote was called off short by the Supreme Court, are working now to make sure that doesn't happen again. “We were working seven days a week, like we do when we are overseas. But I sat down, I took my ballot, and I voted,” retired Navy Capt. Gabe Soltero said. “I would like to think my vote was counted, but I never found out. Was it left aside like many other hanging chads? I don’t know. But that’s always bothered me.” He's volunteering now with Count Every Hero.
Plenty of service members—and their spouses—are reporting issues getting their ballots. “This year in particular I am really concerned there are going to be voters who slip through the cracks,” said Sarah Streyder, who founded the Military Vote Coalition which helps service members and their spouses vote. “You can control when you postmark a ballot, but can’t control when it’s going to get delivered,” Streyder said. Army Col. Chris Paone is in Okinawa, Japan, has been waiting for weeks to get his ballot from Florida. This one can't even be blamed on the USPS—it's supposed to arrive by email. “We’ve been checking spam and junk filters everyday since the ballots were released (45 days out from the election) and he hasn’t received anything,” his spouse, Megan Paone, told McClatchy. “He filled out a FWAB (a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot, an emergency backup ballot) and sent it in just in case his actual ballot didn’t come.”
The Military Times, meanwhile, is advising members that it's not too late to vote absentee. In a normal year without, well, everything, it wouldn't be. But it is advising "In 29 states and the District of Columbia, the laws and rules allow election officials to count ballots that arrive after the polls close from military, their family members, and U.S. citizens overseas, according to an analysis conducted for the Count Every Hero campaign. It varies from two extra days in South Carolina to 20 days in Washington state." States are required under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act to make provisions for overseas and military voters, including in many states extended deadlines for registration and for ballot receipt.
Count Every Hero is doing what they can to make sure it happens, including an ad campaign that demand the television networks wait until all military ballots are counted before declaring election winners. Spokeswoman Ellen Moorhouse told the Military Times "When we say we are worried about ballots not being counted, we are referring to very real threats of a candidate prematurely declaring victory, as well as litigation or interference with the Electoral College via state legislatures," Moorhouse said. "These scenarios could play out in a close race. That’s why we are demanding that vote-counting continue if a winner is not statistically assured by the end of Election Day." Gee, I wonder which candidate she might have in mind there?
"Disenfranchising even one of the thousands of our brave service members and their families by not counting their valid ballots that have been postmarked by Election Day would be a grave insult to the sacrifices our heroes make each and every day," Moorhouse said.