Monthly Archives: October 2010

Investors Business Daily on Military Voting

IBD’s editorial on the military voting saga of 2010.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Vote

The president’s home state gets a pass from the Justice Department on ensuring its soldiers overseas can vote. An administration obsessed with gays in the military doesn’t care about voting rights for GIs.

You can call it a tragedy of errors, a perfect storm of incompetent and uncaring bureaucrats, or you can call it a deliberate attempt to steal what looks to be a close race for both governor and U.S. senator in President Obama’s home state by disenfranchising its servicemen overseas, votes likely to tilt Republican.

Consider that the Illinois primary was in February and that the deadline to print and mail ballots to soldiers fighting for democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan was Sept. 18 — long enough, one would think, for even the slowest bureaucracy to do the job mandated under the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) act.

A seven-month lead time apparently wasn’t enough for the incompetent administration of Gov. Pat Quinn, successor to the walking reality TV show, Rod Blagojevich, to ensure that all counties get their ducks in a row. Quinn is coincidentally locked in a tough battle with Illinois state Sen. Bill Brady where military votes could be decisive.

The Justice Department, which has been woefully lax in enforcing MOVE and ensuring compliance among a number of states that have missed their deadlines, reached an agreement in court last Friday with 35 Illinois counties that didn’t get their ballots out on time. Six counties got an extension by two or three days to receive and count overseas ballots by Nov. 16.

The other 29 counties essentially got a pass. Justice spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said these counties already have 14 extra days after the election to count soldiers’ ballots. But if any votes aren’t counted in a timely manner, she said, “we can file a lawsuit.” This is not how soldiers who may get killed not knowing if their votes counted should be treated.

The excuse given by at least one county, St. Clair, involved a court case in which the Constitution Party was fighting to get on the ballot. St. Clair County Clerk Bob Delaney didn’t mail out absentee ballots to military service members on time because if the Constitution Party had won its case, “I would have had to redo the whole thing again” — at a cost of $2 per ballot, Delaney said.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Board of Elections hand-delivers ballots to inmates in Cook County Jail. The board doesn’t even wait for the inmates to apply — it brings the applications with the ballots! More than 2,600 inmates have cast ballots — strikingly similar to the 2,600 soldiers who will likely not receive a ballot for Tuesday’s election.

It’s fair to say that prisoners, who we thought lose their right to vote upon conviction for a felony, are not likely to vote for law-and-order Republicans, but that soldiers are likely to vote GOP because of that party’s strong position on national defense.

IBD/TIPP polls conducted from March to August found Americans overall were 29% Republican, 35% Democratic and 36% independent. A survey of 1,800 active-duty troops in the April 11 Military Times discovered that GIs were 41% Republican, 29% Democrat and 32% independent. In this election, independents are trending Republican.

There is another close race in Illinois, one involving which party controls the U.S. Senate, between Alexi Giannoulias and Rep. Mark Kirk. Giannoulias is an Obama fundraiser and protege fighting charges of corruption involving his family’s failed Broadway Bank. The military vote could be decisive in this close race.

Would Illinois Democrats, aided by the Obama administration’s Justice Department, deliberately and callously drag their feet so soldiers are denied a vote likely to be for the other way? Nah — that’s not the Chicago Way. Or is it?

Major court victory for military voters (MD)

BREAKING NEWS:  Congratulations to the Military Voter Protection Project.  They have broken new legal ground in protecting military voters.  A Maryland Federal Court ruled today that it is a violation of a soldier’s constitutional rights to not receive his complete ballot on time.  The court ruled that the John Doe officer stationed in Iraq had standing to sue based on deprivations of their constitutional rights.

This is huge news which will affect the 2012 elections.

This is an enormously important decision.  One thing it means is that military members need not wait on the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. at the Justice Department to sue.  It may end the monopoly on DOJ’s oversight of military voting, which is a good thing for everyone in uniform.  It means that in 2012, during the Presidential election, we won’t have to wait for DOJ to act.  Individual soldiers and sailors may have recourse to the courts.  They can act immediately in court, like they are trained to do in combat zones.  It is an enormous victory for military voters.  It means that the Eric Holder military voting disaster  of 2010 might not repeat in 2012.

This also shows that people are more effective than their government.  DOJ filed no lawsuit in Maryland.  MVP did.  MVP  won a victory for military voters from every state. 

Soon to be Chairman Dan Lungren: Unhappy about military voting enforcement

Dan Lungren’s letter to the DOJ is a must read.   Well crafted prose can crush spin.  Lungren’s letter demonstrates the point.  A portion:

Rather than reply to the letter, yesterday you staged a press event describing the Department’s work as “robust
efforts” and stating that it “directly benefitted about 65,000 voters in 14 states.”   Whether or not the Department’s efforts have been robust, the results certainly are not.

Senator John Cornyn blasts DOJ over military voting

This is extremely bad news for the nomination of James Cole to be Deputy Attorney General.  The amazing thing is that DOJ had a chance to soothe an already upset Senator from Texas, but instead they made it worse.

Cornyn’s scathing press release is here about the DOJ’s enforcement of military voting rights, and in particular, a press release issued earlier today by DOJ praising themselves.   As we learned in other matters, the truth will eventually emerge about actual enforcement, and the “agreements.”