Military ballots get special handling

By Larry Wheeler
Gannett News Service

The Bush administration is giving special status to ballots cast overseas by U.S. military personnel. The move aims to avoid one of the most controversial aspects of the 2000 presidential vote recount in Florida and is important politically because military votes historically favor Republican candidates.

The Pentagon and the U.S. Postal Service have set up a system to speed ballots cast by soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The system includes color-coded mailing trays, use of Express Mail and orders that mail clerks cancel, or postmark, all military voting ballots to avoid confusion once the envelopes arrive at county election offices.

“Our military postal personnel will see these trays and they will move first through their system,” said Charles Abell, principal deputy undersecretary for personnel and readiness at the Defense Department.

The Bush administration and others hope to avoid the uncertainty and legal bedlam that accompanied the 2000 presidential vote recount in Florida.

With just hundreds of votes separating George Bush and Al Gore, the campaigns briefly turned to ballots from overseas military personnel to help settle the outcome. Those ballots were still trickling in after Election Day,

Knowing many of the military votes would go for Bush, GOP lawyers pressed county canvassing boards to count as many of the ballots as possible.

Democrats sought to have the ballots declared invalid for any number of reasons, including lack of a required witness signature and date or the absence of a cancellation mark to prove the ballot was mailed no later than Election Day.

Military and election officials could not say how ballots cast by the large number of military personnel now stationed abroad will affect this year’s election. There are currently 141,000 military troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Officials could not provide a breakdown of where those troops are registered to vote.