Reply #8: Let's hope their votes/ballots make it back over here [View All]

[rainbow4321]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6086931.html

As the hotly contested 2008 presidential campaign nears its finish, members of the Texas congressional delegation say they have been fielding complaints from military families about problems in overseas delivery of ballots to active duty troops.

(snip)

A post-election survey by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in 2006 showed that 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— including 6,300 overseas absentee ballots from troops who voted in Texas. "If this kind of deprivation of the right to vote were occurring in the continental United States, it would just rock the country," said Cornyn, who has asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey to launch a civil rights investigation into the problems.

Overseas absentee voting has become an even bigger concern this year because of the large projected turnout in the presidential election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. Some 145,000 absentee ballots had been mailed to overseas military voters by mid-October.