Questions about Troops and voting for President in 2004 -

[xultar]

If Chimpy extends their tour of duty, how do they get to vote? Will the county offices send them ballots? Do they have to request ballots? Can we start a campaign to make sure ballots are sent to Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and everywhere else the soldiers are staioned internationally?

[King of New Orleans]

1. The military has a system

There are actual officers who are designated to aid soldiers wishing to vote obtain and return the correct absentee ballots.

[freetobegay]

2. Do they also make sure * is checked on them?

eom

[rpannier]

3. No

I served in the military. They do nothing sneaky or underhanded. An absentee ballot is filed for, just like in the civilian world, you receive it in the mail, just like in the civilian world and mailed via the postal service.

[Alex146]

4. but would you trust Rove and company

to not mess with absentee ballots? I assume the comander in chief is still comanding. Who knows what they'll try to pull.

[AntiCoup2K4]

5. But that is EXACTLY what happenned in Florida 2000!

Hundreds (or was it thousands?) of supposed military ballots, many returned unsigned, some even without postage.

I've always believed that these ballots' appearance was perfectly timed as the result of George Bush Sr's sudden urge to take a European "fishing trip" the morning after his son's unfinished election. One wonders exactly what Poppy was fishing for.

So while it is probably NOT the military themselves forging the ballots, that hardly matters to the machine counting the punch card on the other end, assuming the ballot counters don't catch the errors.

[rpannier]

6. The Reply was to...

The person above who seemed to be hinting that the military somehow colluded with Republicans to either force the person to vote Republican, or destroy the Democratic ballots. There are lots of Democrats in the U.S. military. Believe it or not, the military holds itself to very high standards of conduct.