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To: Mark Marcellus who wrote (6895)	11/24/2000 1:24:57 AM
From: Jim S	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17683

Good response, Mark, and mostly you're right. The reason GIs never raised a fuss about their ballots not being counted is because it has been a dirty little whispered secret up until now. Just like you don't know what happens to your ballot once it gets dropped in the box or the lever gets pulled, a GI just has to hope everything goes properly once the ballot goes into the mail slot. Federal law stipulates that military overseas ballots not postmarked will be accepted; but if they're not, who is there to raise the issue? Until now, the whole vote-counting process for absentee ballots has been a secret. Well, maybe not secret, but certainly like pulling teeth for a private citizen to find out about. Dead people, dogs, and absentee ballots have tilted many an election, and the people who count votes don't want their private world looked at too closely. Military absentee ballots have been routinely tossed out in prior elections for lack of a postmark ... The (mostly) Republican election officials who were tossing out these ballots also never did anything to see that this situation was corrected, I take exception to that comment. If the Repubs had the most to gain from military ballots, it makes no sense that they would be the ones to "routinely toss them out." To the contrary, I suspect, based strictly on stereotype, that if those ballots are tossed, it would be mostly by Demo vote counters. I also suspect that you are probably right in your assertion that this shoddy treatment of ballots has never been worth the bother of kicking up a fuss. Until now. Personally, I'm glad to see it finally happen. I'm really proud of GW for showing the corrupt, partisan system for what it really is. We're watching the sausage being made. What I take exception to is the Demo Talking Point comment that somehow equates a postal system marking error with an improperly marked ballot. The Jesse Jackson crowd was raising cain about a police roadblock several blocks away from one Miami voting place, saying that was "intimidating" potential black voters, thus denying them their right to vote. (The implicit racism involved in that will pass without comment.) Yet the military ballots are wantonly discarded without a second thought or comment. While I can't argue your point about the cynicism of both sides in this mess, I can see a big difference in the debaucherous manner of the Demo counting houses. I'm firmly of the opinion that the rules in effect at midnight, Nov 6, should be the rules still in effect, and that the election should be OVER. In a post to Toes, you remarked on military voting officers. Yep, there are such things, and the poor Second Lieutenants who get stuck with the duty (in addition to their other "real" duties) are given a book, usually about 10 years out of date, with a half-page synopsis of each state's voting rules. The states are asked, each election year, to update the rules, but they are usually too "busy" to do so, so whatever is in that book is what the 22-year old voting officer has to go by. His function is simply to provide a preprinted ballot request postcard, and if signatures are required for a particular state, he has to sign them as witnessing the ballot requestor's signature. The assistance and guidance this guy gets is usually limited to some very stern warnings to the effect that he'd better not try to influence how anyone votes if he values his posterior. Other than that, there are some pro forma encouragements in various large assemblies that the troops, "should (yawn) exercise their rights as citizens, and vote. If they want to." As a sidenote, GIs only got the right to vote absentee in the early 50's. Ike was the first presidential candidate whose election included military absentee ballots.