What were the totals for the military vote in 2004?

[fooj]

Have they ever been released? If not, WHY? How about the XPats? I've seen people ask from time to time yet I've never seen any totals. Can someone help me out here?

B-)

[BrotherBuzz]

1. The Military voters are afforded the same courtesy civilians are...

their vote is confidential.

[MissWaverly]

3. No, it's not

It said in the Fooled Again book that the servicemen didn't have ballots, they had to go to a counter at their base and vote and the person behind the counter was supposed to fax
their vote to the US, so the officers are repugs and the grunts are dems so they did not want
to publicly vote for Kerry and even if they did, what guarantee did they have that the person
faxing their vote would do it.

[BrotherBuzz]

6. Hmmm, when I was in the 'Mean Green Fighting Machine'...

I mailed a request for an absentee ballot. I received it and mailed it back to my county Registrar of Voters. Why didn't the servicemen do that? Has something changed?

[MissWaverly]

15. Sorry it was not in Palast's book, it was in Fooled Again

Mark Crispin Miller, page 256

"And there was still another initiative to get the soldiers voting "right." In an arrangement
with 20 states (with 20 more soon signing on,) the DOD enabled military personnel to fax their
absentee ballots to their home states-a method of transmission that struck some troops as
potentially intimidating, as it meant in effect the end of secret ballots. In their letter
to the GAO, Reps. Waxman and Maloney quoted "an army Sergeant in Germany who asked not to be
identified for fear of retribution." "Some places you have to hand it off to get it faxed
behind the counter, at the finance office, or personnel support battalion," the Sergeant
said, "They should come up with a better, more surefire system."

Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Whey They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless
we stop them)- Mark Crispin Miller, Basic Books, NY NY 2005

[BrotherBuzz]

17. Enabled military personnel....

Aha, it's not mandatory. I would advocate getting the word out to our boys overseas to avoid voting by email and take the initiative to have an absentee ballot sent to them well in advance of election day, and bypass the slick alternative provided by the Military.

[MissWaverly]

19. first, the fax is not secret and second it allows manipulation

the faxer at either end can discard ballots they don't like.

[BrotherBuzz]

20. That's exactly why the Luddite in me says use snail mail.

[MissWaverly]

30. let me tell you about absentee ballots

I have a friend who is very involved in elections, she says that they discard ballots w/o opening
that they think will go against them, well, how would they know that, by zip code, well how
would they know your home address when you are voting overseas, missing laptops, missing laptops,
and on every street corner, you hear, missing laptops at the VA, it's election time in the city.

[BrotherBuzz]

31. Who is they that are tossing ballots?

Military postal clerks? Boggy men wearing dark glasses and trench coats? US postal contractors? County Registrar of Voters?

[MissWaverly]

33. how about your local BOE

that's the great shredder in the sky for Dem Votes, read Crispin Miller's Book Fooled Again
read Greg Palast's book Armed Madhouse.

Armed Madhouse page 191: Absentee votes Uncounted: The Number of absentee ballots has qunitipled in many states, with the number rejected on picayune technical grounds rising to over half a million 526,240 in 2004. In swing states, absentee ballot shredding was pandemic."

Next to page 206 of Armed Madhouse, there is an illustration of a Republican caging lists for
deployed soliders, it reads as follows:

Bentley Naval Air Station
alphabetical to
Grange all with Naval Air Station after the name

Page 204-205 of Armed Madhouse: "We checked one list that included fifty black soldiers. We called one, Randall Prausa. His wife indicated that his address had changed because he had been
shipped overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote."

Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast, Dutton Books, NY NY 2006

[BrotherBuzz]

34. Bingo, and it's an attack of a thousand cuts...

Some major, many minor, and some made almost subconsciously with a built-in bias that always defaults to republican.

I might suggest adding Sasha Abramsky's book "Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House." to your reading list. I had the pleasure of attending an intimate lecture given by Sasha, and, well, he opened my eyes to things that are happening right under our noses.

[MissWaverly]

35. thanks for the tip

appreciate it, it steams me that the party of support the troops is working behind the curtain
to deliberately strip them of their right to vote.

[Monkeyman]

2. About 79 percent not official but close

[AtLiberty]

4. Did you know that the PENTAGON is in charge of absentee ballots for...

...overseas military personnel AND ex-patriots?

According to Mark Crispin Miller in Fooled Again, as many as three million ex-patriots were disenfranchised in 2004. Ex-patriots tend to vote Democratic, of course.

IF we're lucky enough to win the House this November, I hope that changing this arrangement will be placed on the to-do list.

[babylonsister]

5. I've looked for those elusive figures, and have found nothing.

Not even percentages of how anyone voted. Makes one a tad suspicious.

[Monkeyman]

7. You will not find them we looked right after Kerry lost

Only thing we could get was about 79 percent

[babylonsister]

8. I don't even know how that 79% voted. I guess it doesn't

matter since I doubt we'll ever know the truth.

[fooj]

11. I respectfully disagree.

It DOES matter. I think Americans would be quite interested in how OUR military voted...

How does it look when you've basically sentenced the military to PERPETUAL war and you don't even have their backing?

[babylonsister]

12. I meant it doesn't matter in the sense that I don't see how

we will ever know or be told the truth. Of course 'it matters', which is why I tried to find figures.
The troops' votes probably matter more than ours since they're dying over there. It would be great to know how they voted.

[fooj]

26. My bad...

You're right. Truth is a rare commodity these days. :bounce:

[Monkeyman]

14. Navy Bases and overseas vote not Iraq

[fooj]

10. 79%, eh?

Do you think the 21% would have made Kerry the CLEAR winner?

I just remember having Clinton's # and all previous Presidents re: military votes. What would stop them from releasing the numbers UNLESS our military DID NOT vote for their Commander-in Chief? We all KNOW that if the #'s favored Little Lord Pissypants they would plaster them EVERYWHERE. Just my 2 cents...

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

9. not allowed

such information will never be declassified, At least while the cheney crew rule.

[rickrok66]

13. Voting in the military is OK

I am active duty and I have already voted via absentee ballot in Pennsylvania. We get the same ballots as everyone else. The DOD Inspector General conducted a major review of access to voting for service members after the 2000 elections. I did not read the report but there is a definite emphasis now on making sure everyone is able to request a ballot. We also have better access to on-line information than we did six years. I have received several email reminders on how to go to the federal link to get a ballot.

Take care

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

16. It maybe Okay for you to vote

but the release of said results may not. Hence these results might not be released for public compensation.

Thank You for your Active Duty Service and Bless your dear Family.

[Monkeyman]

18. Have they made it SOP

[McCamy Taylor]

21. I dont think they ever released it. Probably afraid that someone

would poll the troops in Iraq and discover that the totals the Pentagon turned in did not match the results the troops cast. It would be very easy to poll all the soldiers who cast ballots. Unlike a retrospective survey of civilian voters, there would be a high level of confidence that military voters would tell you exactly if they voted and for whom they voted.

[flyarm]

22. who else remembers during Clinton admin the rethugs always said

the military did not support Clinton..well how the hell do we know if the military supports little lord pissy pants..seems the rethugs knew who the military supported with other presidents..why do they not know now ..nor do we!!

fly

[ellenfl]

24. it doesn't matter. the repugs will always say the military

supports them. who can prove otherwise? military personnel absentee ballots would go to the voter's precinct and be combined with all other absentee ballots for that precinct. unless the precinct kept these ballots segregated, who would really know . . . unless the pentagon casts the votes for the grunts.

ellen fl

[flyarm]

23. k&R...n/t

[ISUGRADIA]

25. States that I know the laws of do not tabulate military absentee

ballots separately. They are folded into all absentee ballots that are cast.

[fooj]

27. ONE MORE question...

Why, then, did these assholes fight so hard to keep the military vote out in 2000 during the recount? They did that, didn't they? I seem to remember something like that...I'm not positive, though.

[tritsofme]

37. IIRC it was a common RW refrain that Gore was trying to throw out

military votes in FL.

It has since been proven completely false.

[Karenina]

28. The military and ex-pat vote

were SEVERELY suppressed. Ex-pats the U.S. gubmint hadn't heard of for YEARS turned out in DROVES to register. There were a number of amused news accounts all over the continent. The shenanigans were outrageous.
The military had it even worse. The Pentagon shut down its website sometime before the election... Kerry WON BIG over here. VERY BIG. The gubmint used the opportunity to make a database and DISCARDED the vote. It's all water under the bridge. They got away with it.

[DoYouEverWonder]

29. Since the 2004 election

the military overseas have three options. They can vote by email, fax or regular mail. The Pentagon does not collect the votes, they go directly to your local BOE office. From there, they are counted with all the other absentee ballots and are not totaled separately. That is why no one can produce figures for just the military vote anymore.

[theHandpuppet]

32. Some 80% voted (or tried to vote)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601556.html

Edited to add: Here's an article on HOW they voted in 2004: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-10-03-bush-troops_x.htm

[stanwyck]

36. The very unofficial Marine latrine poll favored Kerry

Look. If the numbers were good for Bush, we'd know them by now. They'd be repeating them every day. My sense is that the numbers were disappointing for the administration, not necessarily indicating a Kerry win, but not as weighted toward Bush as hoped.
And if the military vote was taken tomorrow, specifically among those with Iraq tours, Bush would lose. It's easier to support the guy if you haven't been inside the chaos.