Voter FRAUD Across the Big Pond ???

[Karenina]

Say it ain't so. :eyes:

Suppressing the overseas vote

Record numbers of Americans abroad have registered, but bureaucratic snafus may prevent many from actually voting, writes Alix Christie

Monday October 25, 2004

Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat is pumped. Two weeks ago, sitting in an internet cafe on Munich's Odeonplatz, the software marketer who crafted a hugely successful voter registration website, pulls up numbers that show a remarkable spike in Americans overseas mobilising to defeat George W Bush. Between her site and another out of Hong Kong, Democrats have registered 140,000 new voters, 40% of them from swing states - and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Americans abroad, roused to a boiling fury by a Bush doctrine that has smeared America's good name across the globe, are looking like the "silent swing vote" in several key battleground states. Overseas registration for both parties is up by 400% over 2000; estimates put the tally of possible civilian votes as high as 2 million.

Then the panicked emails start flooding in. Today, less than two weeks before the tightest presidential race in memory, untold thousands of overseas voters still have not received their ballots - and clearly won't be able to get them back in time. Late primaries and legal challenges to Ralph Nader's appearance on the ballot delayed mailings from half the battleground states. In swing states, including Florida, Ohio and New Mexico, different versions of the ballot have gone out, sowing wild confusion. In Pennsylvania alone, at least three versions were mailed overseas, in successive, chaotic waves - with Nader and without him, plus a blank one-size-fits-all ballot with no names at all.

Activists now fear that huge numbers of Americans overseas - both military and civilian - may be as disenfranchised as they were in 2000, when anywhere from 10 to 40% of overseas ballots, depending on the county, just plain never showed up. But, far from helping civilians, the Federal Voting Assistance Programme (FVAP) has dragged its feet. A small liaison office based in the Pentagon, the FVAP provides voting materials to the departments of defence and state for soldiers and civilians abroad, and preaches overseas election law to thousands of local election officials back home.


The Government Accountability Office excoriated the agency for losing thousands of overseas votes in 2000, but the FVAP insists it has corrected its problems this year. Frustrated civilian advocates, however, say the FVAP remains biased and ineffective. Despite reforms, they attest, it still has not shaken its Pentagon roots: It spends the bulk of its energy getting out a heavily Republican vote among half a million service people - but has failed the far greater numbers of civilians (an estimated 4 million, by most counts) who tend to vote a different way.

The tsunami of overseas civilian voters this year has... <snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/salon/0,14779,1335573,00.html

[Quakerfriend]

1. great post, Karenina

Thanks for digging this up. I suppose this explains why we have heard nothing about the overseas vote and its impact on this election.

[Karenina]

2. When the Pentagon

pulled its site, the *crayon was on the wall!

[WritersBlock]

3. And in Louisiana...

My elections office told me that if I wanted to fax my ballot back, I had to use a Louisiana fax cover sheet in addition to the one from the Federal Voter Assistance Program site. The Louisiana cover sheet was required because it had a place for me to sign swearing that I am a US citizen and eligible to vote absentee, etc. It contained EXACTLY the same statement that is on the FVAP cover sheet, according to what was read to me over the phone.

Only problem was: the Louisiana cover sheet wasn't posted anywhere on the internet, and could only be faxed or snailed to me. Nor was anything posted about it on the SOS website; nothing about it on the absentee ballot instructions. I'd never have known if I hadn't called the elections office to get their fax number for the FVAP form.

I ended up mailing my ballot back, and it did get there in time, but I would have preferred to fax it back. I wonder if anyone else living overseas had their vote not get counted because they weren't aware of an obscure form.

[Karenina]

5. There were lots of methods used

to suppress the ex-pat vote. The easiest one was mailing ballots too late for them to be returned on time.

[Vidar]

4. Good article. Thanks for posting.

[Karenina]

6. Kick for anyone curious

about dem Amis in Yurp. Dey don like da *duphin right much...