Will overseas votes get counted?

By Geoff Ziezulewicz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, November 5, 2008

While Election Day passed for those back home Tuesday, many overseas military ballots will continue to arrive at local election offices in the next week, where different laws govern whether an overseas vote can be counted after Nov. 4.

To ensure that such ballots aren’t unfairly disqualified, a nonprofit military voter advocacy group established the Military Ballot Protection Program last week in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida. Representatives say it will help cut down on the legal uncertainties surrounding these votes.

Aided pro bono by the law firm Bingham McCutchen, the National Defense Committee launched the program to help election officials better understand absentee ballot regulations as well, committee member Bob Carey said.

While it’s not yet clear how many overseas troops and military family members attempted to vote this year, numbers from previous elections are generally considered incomplete when it comes to overseas ballots.

But according to the best estimates by the national Election Assistance Commission, about 119,000 overseas military voters tried to vote in 2006, but fewer than half the ballots were actually counted. Anything from a wrong address to a missing signature can disqualify a ballot.

Private studies have placed the number of military members attempting to vote in 2006 as high as 660,000.

The main hope is that "precedents are not set" when it comes to disqualifying overseas military ballots, Carey said.

Absentee voting came to the forefront in Fairfax County, Va., last week, when a county official planned to discard 250 emergency federal write-in absentee ballots because they included a witness’ signature but not their address.

National Defense Committee representatives stepped in and asked the Virginia Board of Elections to review what it characterized as a misapplication of state law in Fairfax.

In the end, the state overruled Fairfax County’s interpretation of the law and those emergency ballots will be counted.

This week, Sen. John McCain’s campaign sued the state to allow for a deadline extension for the acceptance of military ballots, which is normally Nov. 4.

McCain’s camp contends that because some Virginia counties mailed absentee ballots out late this year, troops should get an extended deadline of about a week to get them back and counted.

Carey said the committee may take legal action against states with similar issues like Virginia.

Attorney General: count all absentee military ballots

Absentee ballots from overseas military voters lacking the name and address of a witness must be counted, according to a formal opinion from Attorney General Bob McDonnell.

The opinion affirms that federal law preempts state law, a news release from McDonnell’s office says.

At issue is a state requirement that the completed federal ballot provide the name and address of a witness to the absentee vote – unless the voter has also requested a separate, state-furnished ballot. The federal form, used for voting in all 50 states, does not provide a space for the address and does not specify which states, such as Virginia, require it.

If the Virginia law were upheld, it threatened to invalidate some of the thousands of absentee votes being cast by military members and other Virginians overseas.
The federal write-in absentee ballot is most commonly used by members of the military who are stationed overseas and have not received a state absentee ballot, the Attorney General’s news (Read more...)

Law Threatens Thousands of Military Votes

Get your dialing fingers ready folks and have at it. This cannot be allowed to happen to our military, not now, not ever. ......

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The Fairfax County Registrar—and possibly other Registrars in Virginia—is rejecting most Federal Write-in Absentee Ballots (FWAB) cast by our men and women in uniform.

The FWAB is a federally mandated write-in ballot that allows military servicemembers and their dependents to cast an absentee ballot when they have
not received a ballot before the election. It is a safety net that allows a servicemember to vote even if the mail truck hasn't reached his or her remote
base in Iraq or Afghanistan in time to cast a regular absentee ballot.

Why is the Fairfax Registrar rejecting these ballots? The Registrar states that the witness who signs the envelope containing the FWAB must include his or her address—but most of the ballots don't include the witness' address.

Virginia law does not require a witness address for any other type of absentee ballot. So, for example, a Virginia resident attending college out of state does not need to include her witness' address on her absentee ballot envelope. But the Fairfax County Registrar is holding servicemembers, including those currently defending their country in war zones, to a much more exacting standard, requiring the witnesses who sign their FWABs to include their address.

To make matters worse, the Federal form (SF-186A) that is used for the FWAB
does not have a space for witnesses to include their address. And the Department
of Defense's official Voting Assistance Guide, which it provides to servicemembers as an instruction manual for casting votes while overseas, does not tell servicemembers that they must include an address for their witness. The servicemember would thus have no way of knowing of this requirement.

Federal law does not allow this type of disparate treatment of servicemembers. The Uniform and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voter Act (UOCAVA), 42 U.S.C. § 1973ff-2, requires states to process FWABs "in the manner provided by law for absentee ballots in the State involved." (emphasis added). In other words, the FWAB must be treated like any other absentee ballot under state law and may not be subject to more restrictive requirements. Yet that is precisely what is being done here.

Express your feelings to the state directly:

Virginia State Board of Elections

Suite 101, 200 North 9th Street,

Richmond,Virginia 23219-3485

Telephone: 804 864-8901

Toll Free: 800 552-9745

FAX: 804 371-0194

Also read here...http://www. military. com/news/article/law-threatens-thousands-of-military-votes. html?col=1186032310810

GO! NOW! This cannot stand. Thank you.