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Soldiers voted, but were their votes counted?

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nadinbrzezinski Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 12:37 PM
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Soldiers voted, but were their votes counted?
Soldiers voted, but were their votes counted?
By LISA HOFFMAN
Dec 13, 2005, 06:06
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>>>>More U.S. troops voted in the 2004 election than ever before, according to a new Pentagon study. But critics say that the report by the Federal Voting Assistance Program sheds little light on the most important question: How many of their votes were actually counted? <<<<

>>>>The survey "obscures an important fact: disenfranchisement of military and overseas absentee voters remains alarmingly high," said Wright, who heads the military voting-rights project at the National Defense Committee advocacy group. "When it comes to actually voting, the current system fails miserably."<<<<

>>>>And they said troops will continue to be disenfranchised as long as Internet or other electronic voting is not allowed. The Pentagon had hoped to allow 100,000 troops and other U.S. citizens abroad to vote via the Internet in the 2004 election, but cancelled the experiment after questions were raised about the security of such a voting system. <<<<<

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7805.shtml

Now my sneaky is that many of those disenfranchised troops voted for kerry... msotly from what I heard while at base... but that is just a suspicion, and those numbers were possibly high enough to ahem, both shock the DOD, RNC and change the course of the election. No, I cannot prove it, and for the anti CHB crowd, this is a report, not an Op Ed
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mattclearing Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 12:39 PM
Response to Original message
1. As an anti-CHB crowd member, I noticed that and held my fire. n/t
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FreedomAngel82 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:16 PM
Response to Reply #1
11. There is a difference between
opinion pieces and actual reports with sources and things like that. You can usually tell which one's are the good one's and which one's to just take to heart.
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mattclearing Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:27 PM
Response to Reply #11
15. And that applies everywhere, not just to CHB. n/t
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Botany Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 12:46 PM
Response to Original message
2. Although CHB has a ?able track record as far as it's reporting ....
..... on this I think we have real concerns. KBR a branch of Halliburton was the contractor that handled the
military vote. I worked for Kerry in Ohio and know of calls to his state HQ here from many service people
in Iraq who wanted bush out. One Col. called and wanted to make sure his vote counted and that almost 90%
of the people under his command were voting Kerry.

Once again we have to trust that the a republican company was honest.
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JetboyOne Donating Member (53 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 12:49 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. How did the Colonel
know how his troops were voting?
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Botany Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 12:55 PM
Response to Reply #3
5. This is second hand ......
I heard it from the person who took the call. He was in the Ohio National Guard and he said that
"just about everybody in his command were tired of the shit and wanted to go home."

He asked about voting and how to make sure that his vote was counted.

i find it funny that no data has ever been released about the military vote.
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pocket Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:22 PM
Response to Reply #2
13. KBR handled the vote? I thought absentee votes went via the US Post Ofiice
whic the military handles for themselves.
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Botany Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 03:16 PM
Response to Reply #13
17. I am pretty sure that @ many places "they" set up .....
...... e voting stations for our troops.
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Hubert Flottz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 12:51 PM
Response to Original message
4. Just the ones that voted for Bushco.
Same as our votes!
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DoYouEverWonder Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 12:56 PM
Response to Original message
6. Looks like CB got some of their 'facts' wrong
I spoke to my local Supervisor of Elections after the 2004 Election and one of things we discussed was the military vote.

One of the reasons why we don't know which way the military vote went in 2004 is that their votes are counting in along with all the other absentee ballots that each county receives.

Second, in 2004 the military had numerous options for casting a ballot. They could send an absentee ballot the old fashion way via snail mail or they could go online and vote or send their ballot via email, which was an option that was not available in past elections.

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Viva_La_Revolution Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:01 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. I heard talk about faxing them too...
or am I miss-remembering?
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DoYouEverWonder Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:27 PM
Response to Reply #7
14. Yes, I knew there was one more way
that I wasn't remembering. The point is that in 2004 they made it as easy as possible for the overseas military to vote.

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FreedomAngel82 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:18 PM
Response to Reply #6
12. So why are there no reports about who they voted for?
We all know damn well if Bush knew for a fact that the military voted for him they would be using this for their whole "war on terror" nonsense to stay in Iraq instead of the same old bs.
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DoYouEverWonder Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:32 PM
Response to Reply #12
16. Because in the US we still cast secret ballots
There is no way to know who anyone voted for unless they tell you.

However, in the past overseas ballots may have been counted separately. In 2004, they were counted in with all the other absentee ballots and since the Repugs encouraged people to vote absentee and loosened the rules for absentee ballots, record numbers of people are voting absentee. Hence, there is no way to know how many of those ballots came from the military since they did not keep track.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:04 PM
Response to Original message
8. Is this right -- the failure of the Pentagon to provide
and process ballots is now an argument for "trust us" electronic voting? Or, am I misreading?
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Kansas Wyatt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:11 PM
Response to Original message
9. The vote count totals are very easy to figure out.
Since it has not been parroted on the MSM that Bush won the military vote overwhelmingly, Senator Kerry swept Bush on the military vote. Even if Kerry split the vote, that would mean a lot of military personnel do not trust Bush with the job as Commander In Chief.
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FreedomAngel82 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-13-05 01:15 PM
Response to Original message
10. Last December I was curious about the military vote...
so I googled for it and I only found three results (of course I didn't look for a super long time or anything like that) and two out of three groups I did see voted for Kerry. If Bush did win the votes and they were counted and in his favor we all know damn well he'd use that because of how he uses the military. Which makes me wonder if the military in his presence are Bush friendly or if they're just told not to speak unless they have something nice to say.
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