International Surveillance and the 24% Disenfranchisement of Military Vote

[mod mom]

Could surveillance by the Bush Administration be partly responsible for the high rate of disenfranchisement of the military vote in 2004?

Defense Department Survey indicates a 24% disenfranchise rate on the military vote in 2004. The National Guard was especially hard hit.

http://www.nationaldefensecommittee.org/pages/absentee_voting.html


We Need a Better Way for Soldiers to Vote

Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A28


A Defense Department survey on military voting found that 79 percent of military personnel tried to vote in the 2004 presidential election and that 73 percent of those actually voted .

But the survey obscured an important fact: Disenfranchisement of military and overseas absentee voters remains high. Between 30 and 45 percent of these potential voters failed to receive their absentee ballots or received them too late to matter, according to surveys by the National Defense Committee and the Overseas Vote Foundation.

About 1.4 million active-duty members of the uniformed services and 1 million spouses and family members are eligible for absentee voting. In addition, an estimated 4 million U.S. civilians who live abroad are eligible. Yet most states still conduct absentee voting through U.S. mail via a cumbersome three-step process.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301729.html

[Botany]

1. This could explain why the vote did not reflect the high %

of real anger @ bush in 04. Didn't Haliburton aka KBR handle a lot of the
voting by troops in Iraq @ special vote computers?