Military ballots no ‘emergency’

The Pentagon is taking no last-minute emergency measures in its absentee-ballot system and the U.S. Postal Service says it has had “no delays” in handling the ballots, despite complaints from some soldiers.

“It doesn’t look like we will get our vote counted,” one soldier in Iraq wrote in an e-mail to his sister, who contacted The Washington Times.

The soldier, in western Iraq, said he and others were given forms to request absentee ballots from their home states.

“Well, it hasn’t gotten here yet,” the soldier wrote in the Oct. 22 e-mail. “I’m a little angry about that. We will see what happens.”

His sister, Sheila Brothers, of Wilmington, N.C., voiced her own frustration: “They are fighting for us and implementing a democratic voting system over there, but they can’t even vote in our own elections? Come on.”

Military officials said problems with absentee voting are not so widespread as to warrant emergency measures. Complaints are being handled “on a case-by-case basis,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

She said military overseas ballots are sent to New York or San Francisco, then mailed overnight to their destinations.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a statement Wednesday saying it was handling absentee ballots “as expeditiously as possible,” and had “identified no delays in our handling of balloting materials or actual ballots.”

For those who don’t receive their ballots in time, the Pentagon last week announced a federal write-in absentee ballot that can be downloaded from the Internet. If postmarked on time, the ballot will be accepted by local elections officials nationwide.

In order to be eligible, however, an overseas voter must meet “very specific conditions,” the Pentagon said. They need to have applied for a regular ballot and had their application received by local election officials “at least 30 days before the election.”

Complaints about the absentee-ballot system reach beyond military and overseas voters. Some are coming from battleground states.

In Ohio, more than 17,000 absentee ballots were scrapped this month when officials ordered independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader off the ballot for submitting bogus names on his petitions.

The incident was worsened by a mix-up in the positioning of punch holes on ballot cards in Ohio’s southwestern Hamilton County. The county had more problems when it was reported that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry was left off some absentee ballots.

In Florida’s Broward County, state officials are concerned that as many as 60,000 absentee ballots might be missing, and they have stepped up efforts to man an overwhelmed telephone system swamped with calls from anxious and frustrated voters.