RFK Jr. mentioned overseas/military votes. GAO issued report in April 2006

[ProSense]

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

The GAO issued this report in April 2006:

ELECTIONS
Absentee Voting Assistance to Military and Overseas Citizens Increased for the 2004
General Election, but Challenges Remain
April 2006


(page 18)
Despite the efforts of FVAP, DOD, and DOS, we identified three challenges that remain in providing voting assistance to military personnel and overseas citizens, which are:

• simplifying and standardizing the time-consuming and multistep absentee voting process, which includes different requirements and time frames for each state;8 Some Challenges Remain in Providing Absentee Voting Assistance

• developing and implementing a secure electronic registration and voting system; and

• proactively reaching all overseas citizens.

Full PDF

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06521.pdf

Highlights:
http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06521high.pdf

Here was the excuse at the time:

Posted 9/21/2004 3:01 AM Updated 9/21/2004 11:53 AM

The Pentagon doesn't want you to vote overseas

A Web site maintained by the Department of Defense is blocking access to non-military Americans. Could it be worried that expatriates are leaning toward Kerry?

By Farhad Manjoo

Snip…

News of the Pentagon's traffic-blocking immediately aroused alarm and suspicion among voting-rights activists, and it's not hard to see why. For the 6 million Americans living abroad, signing up to vote at home is a daunting task, a Byzantine process that differs for each citizen depending on his or her home state and even home county.

Over the past year, the Federal Voting Assistance Program Web site has been widely advertised all over the foreign press as the way for Americans to get help on how to vote in the upcoming election. The site, which is maintained by the Department of Defense, is a nonpartisan, comprehensive, and official clearinghouse for voting registration information. Now that it's been put off-limits to many Americans just before registration deadlines kick in, activists fear that Americans will be unfairly barred from voting this year.

Why would the Pentagon do this? Officials at the Voting Assistance Program have told some Americans living abroad that the blocked ISPs were havens for "hack" attacks against the voting site; the Pentagon had no choice but to block them in order to keep the voting site secure from attack. But that explanation is extremely fishy, say critics who see something more nefarious at work. The Defense Department maintains all manner of sensitive Web sites -- for instance, MyPay, which allows military personnel to manage their compensation online -- and it's had no problem protecting those from hackers while keeping them open for legitimate uses.

"This is a completely partisan thing," one Defense Department voting official told Salon. The official, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being fired, is one of the many people in the department assigned to help both uniformed military personnel as well as American civilians register to vote. The offical described the Pentagon as extremely diligent in its efforts to register soldiers stationed overseas -- for instance, voting assistance officers have been told by the department to personally meet with all of the soldiers in their units in order to help them register. But the department has ignored its mandate to help overseas civilians who want to vote, the official said.

Not surprisingly, political pollsters believe that uniformed military personnel, especially military officers, lean toward Republicans in their voting habits; American civilians who live abroad, meanwhile, are particularly progressive. One recent Zogby survey, for example, showed that voters with passports supported Kerry over Bush by a margin of 55 to 33 percent.


http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/09/21/overseas_voting/index.html

[rodeodance]

1. I recall when that overseas web site was shut down but nothing else

about it. Glad to see he addressed it in the article.

[babylonsister]

2. It fries me that we can ask soldiers to die in our name, but a

roadblock was put up wherever possible to obfuscate how they voted, or if their vote even counted.
I still haven't seen definitive numbers on that.

[ProSense]

5. Every time an MSM article covers the election, it focuses

on Ohio, using conjecture to denounce research. They never explore all the other serious infractions voter disenfranchisement or machine fraud (way too hard, would require real investigation). The recent GAO report is the weakest thing I've seen since the Carter-Baker commission report. The language was complete fluff.

[fedupinBushcountry]

3. Diana Kerry

worked her tail off to get out the vote abroad. Many would have never voted if it wasn't for her get out the vote efforts. She deserves a big thank you. She was a s angry as the rest of us at the media and the way voters were treated abroad by the U.S. government.

November 09, 2004
From the Desk of Diana Kerry:

Dear Overseas Voter:
I want to thank you for making the effort to register to vote and request an absentee ballot in the 2004 Presidential Election. I won?t pretend that I?m not disappointed with the results of this election. I feel that my brother?s record and character were maligned from the start by an uncommonly personal and negative campaign, and that the US news media for the most part failed in their coverage of this important race.

more>
http://www.aokerry.com/

[ProSense]

4. Thanks for posting that! Quote on the Pentagon's excuse:

The sister of Democratic hopeful Sen. John Kerry said she was "outraged" and accused the Pentagon of "gross bureaucratic negligence and indifference to the rights of American voters."

"That the Pentagon ... has chosen to surrender to unspecified 'hackers' without firing a single shot in defense of American democracy is suspect," Diana Kerry said in a statement.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2004-09-21-voterreg-block_x.htm