All soldiers deserve secret ballot

Ft. Wayne Gazette   24 September 2004

It is shameful to ask soldiers serving overseas to sacrifice the right to privacy in order to vote. Indiana should change the practice.

The state allows soldiers to fax their absentee ballots to their home counties. The deadline to apply for fax balloting is Nov. 1, the day before the general election.

Faxing ballots is attractive because in past years, sadly, election boards in Indiana and elsewhere received overseas ballots by mail days after the election.

Indiana, as one of the top five states with soldiers overseas, has significant reasons to help its soldiers vote. In Allen County, one soldier chose the fax ballot for the primary, and 20 have signed up so far for the general election.

But there’s a hitch: Those who choose to fax give up the right to privacy.

Yes, it’s voluntary. Yes, it ensures the ballot is counted. However, there is the horrible irony of asking those who volunteered to protect America to give up a core right of the republic – the secret ballot.

Voting by itself is not the sole hallmark of democracy. Many dictatorships allow “voting.” In this country, women didn’t achieve suffrage until 1920, and disenfranchisement was so rampant among blacks that the federal government had to step in with legislation.

The hallmarks of democracy are the widespread right to vote and ballot secrecy. And they, above all, should be protected. Giving soldiers the secret ballot preserves both.

Indiana should be credited for setting up a direct service between county election boards and soldiers. Missouri and North Dakota are taking heat now for an e-mail voting system that involves the Defense Department and an outside contractor.

This comes only months after the department scrapped a similar initiative because of security concerns.

Even the Defense Department is asking soldiers to use electronic services only as a last resort. The paper ballot remains “the most secure, the most traditional means of getting their vote in (and) getting it counted,” Charles Abell, principal deputy undersecretary of defense, told the department’s Armed Forces Information Service on Sept. 1.

There’s no doubt that Indiana’s secretary of state, Todd Rokita, was sincere that his motivation for backing the faxed ballot was to assure Indiana’s soldiers that their vote would be counted no matter where they are. There’s no doubt that Allen County’s election board will do its best in limiting the number of eyes allowed to see faxed ballots.

Good intentions, but ultimately the system is fraught with potential flaws. With the billions of dollars the Defense Department has, with all the talk of how technologically advanced this nation is, in the age of jet flight, how is it that absentee voting for soldiers is antiquated to the point of absurdity?

No soldier should have to give up one right in order to participate in another. This is a choice, but it is one that no one should ever be in the position to consider.