Senate Bill Aimed at Making Absentee Ballots from Overseas Count

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) has sponsored a bill that would hopefully remove one obstacle to absentee voting for our troops overseas.

The bill has 29 co-sponsors, all Republican. McCain supports the measure, while Obama did not sign on as a supporter.

The bill is meant to address some woeful stats regarding absentee ballots:

— Only 16.5 percent of the 6 million eligible military and overseas voters requested an absentee ballot for the November 2006 election.

— Only one-third of the requested ballots were cast and counted.

— And, 5.5 percent of the total eligible military and overseas citizen voters cast a ballot in the November 2006 election.


www.foxnews.com...

Here is an excerpt from the article:

WASHINGTON — Although roughly 6 million U.S. citizens are eligible to vote oversees using absentee ballots — many of whom are serving in the military — only a fraction of their ballots are being counted.

The bipartisan Election Assistance Commission found that of the nearly 1 million absentee ballots sent out for the 2006 election, only 300,000 actually were counted. Some estimate the low return of absentee ballots meant 400,000 service members' votes overseas weren't counted.

The problem seems to be the mail. It takes 18 days for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail to Iraq and 18 days for it to be returned.

Military personnel traditionally vote conservative. This brings up the question, is this why there were no Democrat co-sponsors for Cornyn's bill?