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Let me repeat myself: out of 2 million military and overseas votes cast in the 2010 election, only 4.6% of those votes were counted. This is scandalous. If these kind of results were occurring stateside, we’d be talking voter suppression on a massive scale. In 2010, the voter participation rate was 41.6 percent. While one might assume many of these military votes might skew more conservative, if you do care about democracy and the right to vote, this issue needs to be addressed regardless (unlike GOPer, who bank on suppressing what they feel would be Dem votes, since they believe their policies cannot withstand actual scrutiny at the ballot box). (McClatchy):
The problem has always existed, given the high degree of mobility of our fighting forces,” said Eric Eversole, founder and executive director of the Military Voter Protection Project, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.
But the issue is a bigger concern during a presidential election year with a military force totaling more than 3 million, including active-duty and reserve forces.
In 2010, of the approximately 2 million military and overseas voters accounted for in data reported by the states to the Election Assistance Commission, only 4.6 percent of those voters were able to cast an absentee ballot that counted, according to the Military Voter Protection Project’s analysis of that data from the federal Election Assistance Commission, which tracks participation in voting. That compared with 5.5 percent in 2006, which was also a midterm election, the organization concluded.
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The PTB will flatly declare (again) that internet voting us the only possible solution… despite the multiple attempts that have proven that it does not work and can not be made secure.
Which leads to the question of which is scarier: hacked drones or a hacked military voting block?
That percentage will be even *smaller* this year, what with the traitors from ALEC/TeaBircher crowd passing all these voter restriction bills!
These laws shrunk the time a Board of Election could send an absentee ballot and the days it would take for the BOE to receive the ballot in the mail.
I wonder if these self-proclaimed “patriots” thought of that when there degenerates drew up these copycat bills? They keep spewing that their patriotism is *vastly* superior to everyone else, yet they draw up bills to *deny* these “brave and fearless heroes” tgheir right to vote!
Thing is, both low-ranking troops and veterans tend to be far less conservative than their officers. So yeah, this is voter suppression designed to target a Democratic-voting population. (ALEC’s voter-suppression model bills don’t just disenfranchise nonwhites, but also the elderly, college students, and veterans, and anyone who moves around a lot.)
I was wondering what the overall military participation rates were, and those are themselves shockingly low. From the study itself (PDF):
Well, if your in the military odds are your not in your voting district to start with. So you have to vote by absentee. We all know that even if we get the ballots on time and return them on time, odds are our votes won’t even be counted unless the votes on the day of voting come close.
Even then… 20 years in, and trying to vote on something I finally managed to get a ballot. They actually seperate the ballots from regular mail and that one time the bag got lost. When I finally got a REAL address (not a barracks, ship or station) and could vote locally, I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to go to vote so I went in as soon as the doors opened (6am) and voted in uniform. …and got a butt chewing for doing it.
Mostly though its the whole issue of ‘home of record’ and forcing the lower ranks to vote by mail in ballot. We all know that they only look at ours if its close by usually someone conceeds before the night is even over.
While it is possible in some jurisdictions not all ballots are counted unless they have to be, I know for certain that in many states they are counted, no matter what, so long as they are returned by legal deadlines.
And that is the biggest issue. Getting the ballot in time to return it in time. This is why certain states and counties have started providing e-mail options, where UOCAVA voters can request to receive a pdf of their ballot by e-mail so it can be printed out and mailed back, which removes the first half of the shipping problem.
I think this article’s title is slightly misleading in that the 4.6% is based on accepted ballots to total registered voters, not on ballots requested, or ballots returned. If you look at the ballots returned, the acceptance rate is quite high. If you look at the ballots sent however, you realize that only 15.8% requested a ballot at all.
Really you have different numbers to deal with here – total registered voters; voters who did not attempt to participate; voters who attempted to participate but were not able to; and voters who successfully participated.
So there are two distinct issues here, the first being why did so many who were sent a ballot, never return it. This only reflects 10.2% of those total registered voters.
The second issue is also pressing, and that is, why is the attempted participation so low? Statistically it would be logical to expect the same general turnout as stateside voters, which in this case was 41.6%. So if it was 15.8%, then that is an unexplained 25.8% who didn’t attempt to participate, but statistically you would have expected too.
I think there are probably at least three reasons: they are familiar with the problems with receiving and returning ballots in a timely fashion, and so don’t even try; they believe that even if they return it it will never be counted because of the prevalent idea that absentees are only counted “if they have to be”; and lastly, they simply forgot to request an absentee because of their current environment/situation.
The first can be resolved with improved ways of getting the ballot, such as by e-mail, and by having longer canvass windows. The second issue boils down to educating these overseas voters on the actual canvass process, and if there is merit to this belief within a specific jurisdiction, improving the process, or legal requirements as the case may be, to require all ballots received in a timely manner to be counted. The last also comes under education, as well as possibly improved methods of informing these voters when the deadlines are as elections come up.
even more to the point, most absentee ballots aren’t counted.
if the networks declare a victor from the election day balloting.
absentee ballots are then discarded with no tabulation.
This is not universally, or even often, true. I know a lot of people truly believe it. But it is not. Don’t believe this because you have heard it – contact your state and local election boards to find out the legal process they are required to follow for the canvassing of ballots. In some jurisdictions the entire process is even open to the public to watch.
These citizens in service to this nation around the world deserve a higher level of voter protection. Congress should legislate a separate voting process for US military personal abroad. Technology certainly allows for it and there should be no problem with fraud.
Put your ass and life on the line and your vote is not even counted? The ultimate “Camel Dung” in the face for our men and woman. So how many GI votes from Vietnam where counted in 1968?
There actually are various projects investigating new systems for this, some funded by the FVAP grants. Also in some places they have already been implemented to a point. Maricopa County Arizona for example has an interesting system in place for UOCAVA voters.
pardon me, but do you have any proofs that absentee ballots ever get counted?
especially if the number of absentee ballots are less than the ballot count differentials[i.e., it the winner - sic- wins by more than more votes than the number of absentee votes cast, the absentee votes are not counted].
would you disagree?
but more to the point, do you think that there has ever been an honest vote count? i do not.
I have actually been involved in the process first hand in the past. Hours upon hours of helping support this “not counting” everybody always harps on about. And yes, in case you wonder, it does get frustrating being repeatedly told by people they “know” I spent all those hours doing nothing.
Additionally as a point of fact, the result breakdowns are available after the fact. The official results are broken down by type of vote, and the absentee results are in fact available after certification, usually on a state website, or on request. The fact so many news organizations don’t bother updating their numbers after election night unless they have to, is not actually the fault of those supporting the election. It is the arrogance of the media that assumes they have the power to call races without even waiting for the official results. Which aren’t released until after the canvassing of the absentee and provisional(where applicable) ballots.
Corruption can exist in elections. But the level of corruption required to improperly count every single election in every single local jurisdiction, every single state, in the entire country, is statistically improbable to the point of absurdity. It would require virtually every person ever employed, every temp, every non-profit volunteer, to not only be complicit, but be silent about it after the fact. It would require auditors, both state and federal, to intentionally ignore the bad data in their findings.
I don’t think people realize exactly how many people are involved in a single election cycle to do the counting and tabulation. Statistically it is far more likely for mistakes to be made through incompetence, than conspiracy.
Problems absolutely exist within the process and the law, but by and large they can be laid at the feet of state legislatures, and federal congressmen and so on, who make the laws that define the system in question. Not those who simply attempt to implement those laws.
Thanks for your persistence Smskarkjhghaffioh…what a tagname you’ve got.
I too have spent many, many hours as you have, seeing all these “uncounted” votes get counted…people believe what they want to believe.
In fact, in California, the standard practice is that all the absentee votes mailed in by close of voting on election day are already loaded into the tabulating machines by 8pm and are the very first votes counted!
Standard practice among CA political observers has been for years to discount as overly conservative the numbers that come out in the first 30 minutes, because those are the absentee votes, which skew heavily toward older white folks and military.
And their description of better provision of overseas absentee ballots sounds great— until they suddenly, jarringly, begin blowing massive amounts of smoke about the security of electronically returned absentee ballots… in other words, e-voting.
http://www.fvap.gov/resources/media/maricopa.pdf
… always the military that gets hung out to dry with these experiments.
I think a lot of people agree that the returned pdf approach is a bit scary. But the rest of the system is something other jurisdictions who don’t have as good a system can learn a lot from. Basically Maricopa has a lot of technical infrastructure in place that can help with this problem. So don’t lose sight of the bigger picture because of the one piece you strongly disagree with.
While most jurisdictions will be adamant about not implementing any form of electronic return method, they can learn a great deal about what other specific areas to target for improvement. These are such things they can implement that Maricopa has such as online voter registration, online absentee request, online ballot delivery, as well as legal changes to the canvass timeline.
In some jurisdictions ballots can be returned and still counted up to 10 days after election day, which gives an additional window. And the 45 day requirement of the MOVE act, is also important here. Think for a moment, if a voter can register, request, and print a ballot all online from overseas, 45 days before the election, and then return it with up to 55 days for it to be delivered, many if not most of the problems can be resolved, helping improve the ratio between requested and returned.
Unacceptable. Flatly unacceptable.
In CT, I’ve witnessed ballot counting many times. Absentee ballots are always counted, if they’ve been received by the time the polls close. (I think some states require that absentee ballots be postmarked by the time the polls close.) One non-counting issue that has came to light last year was ballots cast by disabled voters who do not write their ballots, but rather “phone it in” literally. CT allows for ballots to be cast via voice on a telephone located in the polling place. But it’s worth noting that those ballots are very limited in terms of total votes cast.
Also I have lived overseas – and voted from – both Vietnam and Haiti. The biggest hurdle for me was not any US-based issue (or conspiracy). The main difficulty for me was the poor postal systems that existed in each country at that time.
I’m not saying my issues are major factors, but they are part of this concern.