Discounting the Troops
Posted on | September 28, 2007
All the reverent talk about our military doesn’t address a fundamental problem with their voting rights.
WASHINGTON — Overseas military voters had less than half of their votes counted in last year’s congressional elections, according to data released by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Monday.
“One thing is clear: At every level of government, we need to do a better job,” said Donetta Davidson, chair of the commission. “We must make sure all eligible voters are getting their opportunities.”
The figures, released at the commission’s annual conference on ways to improve and troubleshoot the absentee voting process, showed that only about 992,000 of the nearly 6 million eligible overseas citizens requested ballots for the 2006 general election.
That included about 119,000 military personnel stationed outside the United States. Of those, only about 57,000 — less than 48 percent — had their votes successfully cast or counted.
EAC officials said that’s roughly the same percentage that were counted for expatriates and domestic military filing absentee ballots…
Statistically, this is a worse deal than the Three-Fifths Compromise.
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