American Soldiers Are Citizens Too
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By David Hackworth
Ronald Scott Owens, who hailed from Vero Beach, Fla., recently made the
ultimate sacrifice along with 16 shipmates when the USS Cole was attacked in
Yemen's Aden harbor.
Now, from what I'm hearing, the ballots of Ronald Scott Owens and almost 700
other Florida military voters may have been deep-sixed for reasons that
former President Carter and the Arbiters of Good would already be decrying
if we weren't America the Beautiful.
This skulduggery was exemplified in a five-page letter -- a tip sheet,
really, on how to zap military absentee voters -- sent by Florida lawyer
Mark Herron to like-minded attorneys who've been storming the Sunshine
State.
The word is that this injustice took on a life of its own when Democratic
Party leaders both in Florida and in Washington did the math and decided the
military vote would favor the opposition. Instead of emulating Lincoln's
example during our Civil War, Herron and cohorts chose instead to follow
Stalin's credo: "It doesn't matter who votes, it only matters who counts the
votes." As a result, many of those who risk their lives in dangerous places
were flat-out disenfranchised.
Adding insult to injury, according to The Miami Herald, "At least 39
felons -- mostly Democrats -- illegally cast absentee ballots in Broward and
Miami-Dade counties."
Felons get to vote, but ballots from GI Joe and Jill are tossed in the
reject pile over trivia such as the addresses of signature witnesses. Or
because envelopes lacked a stamped postmark, even though federal law says
one's not required.
Torpedoing other ballots required more twisted logic. For example, according
to The Wall Street Journal, a ballot bearing "a domestic postmark because a
soldier had voted, sent his ballot home to his parents and asked them to
mail it in on time, is thrown out. A ballot that comes with a note from an
officer explaining his ship was not able to postmark his ballot, but that he
voted on time -- and indeed it had arrived in time -- is thrown out."
In Florida, signatures of our defenders were compared with signatures on
registration cards, and if one said Jim Patriot and the other James Patriot,
the ballot was trashed. No one seemed to take into consideration that
PFC/Sergeant/Captain Patriot's concentration when he voted might have been
diverted to scope for terrorists off Aden or land mines in Kosovo or
missiles over the skies of Iraq. Ballots postmarked "Queens, New York" or
"Jacksonville, Florida" were denied, although even Disney World's Mickey
Mouse probably knows these post offices routinely handle overseas military
mail.
I still have letters mailed by me from Italy at the end of World War II and
from Korea and Vietnam during those conflicts. Not only are none postmarked,
I never did run across a U.S. Post Office out where danger lurked and
bullets sang, and I would be happy to testify accordingly.
The same no-post-office rule holds true in the conflicts I've covered as a
reporter. Our sailors and soldiers in nasty places like ex-Yugoslavia, Latin
America and the Gulf scribbled "FREE" on the envelope as their dads did and
stowed their letters in empty ration boxes to find their way from platoon to
division and finally on a bird to the USA. It's always been and still is: No
stamp, no postmark.
The troops are angry -- they feel they're second-class citizens whose votes
go uncounted because they don't count. I average 500 e-mails on normal days;
this injustice has quadrupled the input, and the fire from those messages
has almost melted my computer.
Sure the courts will make their judgments and hopefully cut our warriors
some slack, but this shameful episode will leave its wounds. Healing can
only begin when we truly honor and respect those who lay it all out there
for you and me. A good start would be to bring a military voting system
that's presently as obsolete as the blunderbuss into the age of the
laser-guided missile.
Of course, we also must set up a fair national standard for the vote -- one
guaranteed to prevent a replay of what's been going down in Florida, a state
that's produced more than its share of the heroes who keep our great country
on course with their ballots as well as their bullets.
***
© 2000 David H. Hackworth
Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc.
hackworth.com |
