Did you know that it is easier for an astronaut on the international space station to cast a vote in the upcoming presidential election than it is for a member of our own armed services posted overseas?
If you don’t believe me, please listen to these two audio stories from National Public Radio’s program Morning Edition.
(Click on the red links to listen to the two short spots.)
NASA Helps Astronauts Cast Ballots from Space : NPR
Groups Aim To Ease Overseas Voting For Americans : NPR
Military and overseas voters are faced with an overly complicated voting process that has seven major and up to 13 sub-steps, from deciding to participate in the electoral process to actually casting a vote, and it is dependent on the individual absentee ballot laws governing the state that the soldier originally resided in.
Some states like California have already sent their ballots out to their citizen soldiers. Some allow for electronic voting, or voting via fax. Some states have yet to even print their absentee ballots, and then they get mailed through the USPS to the Military Postal System Agency. After that they are shipped through military logistics channels, competing often with supplies for space on cargo transports.
Operational, hostile and remote locations can delay mail delivery further, there are a couple of wars going on after all. The military standard for delivering mail to and from military personnel in combat zones is 12 to 18 days. Department of Defense officials claim that mail is transiting smoothly, even to remote operational sites in Iraq and Afghanistan, citing 11-13 day transit times.
The time of mail delivery is critical, especially for blank and voted ballots, because on average, states don‘t send absentee ballots until 35-40 days before the election. For some states, like Rhode Island and Massachusetts, ballots are sent 21 days prior to the election. With the military postal standard mail delivery time being 24-36 days round-trip, there is little, if any room for delay or error.
According to the Pew Center on the State’s, military and civilian overseas voting project, Service members want to vote, but are forced to navigate a laborious, complex and failure-prone system in order to exercise that right. Surveys show that military personnel have great interest in election results and voting.
For example: 77% of the military said they were very interested in the 2004 general election, a 12 percentage point increase over 2000. Of those military personnel that said they did not vote in 2004, 30% did not because their ballots never arrived or arrived too late to their duty stations and 28% did not know how to get an absentee ballot, found the process too complicated, or were unable to register.
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Military_Overseas_Voting_Project.pdf
According to the Pew Center, “the Voting Assistance Guide that the Department of Defense‘s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) produces yearly is a 460-page instruction manual that details the state-by-state procedures for completing and sending in the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA, the combined voter registration and absentee ballot form the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voter Act (UOCAVA) of 1986 directs military and overseas voters to use) and Federal Write-in Absentee Ballots (FWAB—a military/overseas version of a provisional ballot to be used if the requested absentee ballot does not arrive in time). When a service member or overseas citizen gets a copy of the FPCA, he or she must reference his or her state‘s five to ten pages of specific instructions to determine which FPCA blocks to fill out.”
Did your eyes glaze over reading the last paragraph? Mine did…I find it patently offensive, and absurd that young men or women who are risking life and limb to insure our right to vote as a citizen of this country, have to read their way through a 460 page manual and go through up to 20 different steps simply to be able to cast a vote for their own Commander in Chief.
It’s even more offensive to me that those same troops have been used to guarantee free and open democratic elections around the world, (including in Iraq and Afghanistan) yet thousands of military voters are prevented from voting due to confusing and conflicting voter laws, and an antiquated mail delivery system. This is especially frustrating, when with one click of a button, an astronaut orbiting the earth can cast their vote, as effortlessly as you or I, or even a soldier in the field, can send an email.
Something is definitely wrong, and something needs to change. There is less then two months until this historic election, and it is highly unlikely that a majority of the troops overseas will be able to cast a vote easily. Even the solutions set forth today, are still too complex, and still too reliant on the postal service.
