Problems still plague voting by military
WASHINGTON – Problems with military absentee ballots that clouded the 2000 election have not been fixed, jeopardizing the ability of more than 160,000 troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to have their votes counted this fall.
Among developments that have election officials concerned:
• A $22 million pilot program to develop an Internet voting system for Americans deployed overseas was scrapped after the Pentagon concluded it would be vulnerable to hackers intent on tampering with elections.
• The General Accounting Office (GAO) found that the system used to collect and deliver mail in Iraq, including absentee ballots, suffers from long delays and other problems.
• The Pentagon’s Inspector General found that a Defense Department program to ease voting by Americans overseas, including deployed troops, continues to be given low priority by field commanders. Surprise visits to 10 foreign sites found seven programs ineffective and three only partially effective. Nearly three of every five troops surveyed said they did not know their voting assistance officer.
• A Pentagon agency charged with helping servicemembers and other Americans vote abroad is more than two months late in providing information for a report on how states are doing and how they can improve.
“I would like to have seen it out much earlier,” says Paul DeGregorio, a member of the new Election Assistance Commission created to help solve problems with the nation’s voting procedures.
Troops voice concern
The commission can’t finish its report until it receives complete information from the Pentagon, DeGregorio says. Military personnel “are sacrificing their lives. They have every right to think their government is going to help them participate as voters.”
The signs are worrisome, says Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, one of the authors of the 2002 Help America Vote Act, a law designed to fix problems that became evident in the 2000 election.
He said troops in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf voiced concerns to him during a recent trip.
“They are at war, and they want that vote to count,” Ney says. “It’s scary because it’s just not going the way it should.”
The Federal Voting Assistance Program, a small office that is part of the Defense Department, said in a written answer to questions that it is “confident the military mail system will allow servicemembers to send in absentee ballots in a timely fashion.”
The office said it is working with the Postal Service to give priority to ballots in specially marked envelopes.
More than 4 million Americans live abroad, including members of the armed services and their families, embassy workers and civilians whose jobs take them overseas.
Potential impact on election
Studies show that military families are more likely to vote, and more likely to support Republicans, than others. But this year, military experts say long deployments, low morale and some disaffection with President Bush’s foreign policy decisions may erode the GOP’s edge.
Any problems with military voting could have the greatest impact on battleground states such as Florida, Missouri and New Mexico, which have large military populations.
In 2000, an estimated 29 percent of military personnel who wanted to vote did not get absentee ballots or received them too late.
The impact was felt particularly in Florida, where hundreds of military absentee ballots weren’t counted because they arrived late, lacked postmarks or had problems with signature verification.
A study by the Pentagon at that time found that three-quarters of overseas troops it interviewed reported problems in voting.
In a separate study, the GAO found that instructions from Washington to help troops vote were often given low priority in the field. The new studies this year suggest those problems haven’t been fully addressed.