Plagued by a history of problems delivering mail, especially in wartime, the Pentagon will soon be unveiling a program to do a better job of getting ballots overseas and back so units deployed in combat zones and elsewhere can cast votes in the fall presidential election.
The pledge for improvement comes amid critical reports on laggardly military mail service and complaints of shortages of forms to request absentee ballots for overseas civilians.
Pentagon studies of recent elections have found about a quarter of overseas military service members who try to get an absentee ballot do not get it in time or do not get it back to their local election office in time for it to be counted. More recently, a General Accounting Office study released this month said historic military mail problems have resurfaced in Iraq.
The Pentagon and the Postal Service are putting finishing touches on a joint agreement for speedy handling of ballots going back and forth to units overseas. The ballots will travel in specially colored containers so everyone knows they need priority handling, said Charles S. Abell, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. His portfolio includes the Federal Voting Assistance Program responsible for more than 6 million military and civilian voters overseas.
Skeptical of 'snail mail'
The Postal Service will keep track of how many absentee ballots go out and come back.
"We're going to move ballots more quickly and more efficiently," Abell said. "We are really focused on how does that guy in the remotest section of Afghanistan and Iraq get his ballot and get it in and counted."
Samuel F. Wright is skeptical of the "snail mail" solution.
"We've heard that before. I'm hopeful, but the proof is in the pudding," said Wright, director of the Military Voting Rights Project for the National Defense Committee in Arlington.
Wright said the title is grandiose for his part-time, one-man operation but says he has been fighting the problem of missed military ballots for 23 years. "Have you seen the 1952 congressional hearings?" he said. Those hearings focused on mail problems in the Korean War before he was born.
Wright sent out his own survey in 2002, which found that more than two out of five military voters' ballots did not get counted because of paperwork errors, missed deadlines or other problems. Wright supports online voting, but the Pentagon two months ago canceled its pilot program that had expected to let 100,000 overseas citizens vote over the Internet. The $22 million experiment died after experts said the Internet is so insecure that counting online votes could jeopardize the integrity of the entire election.
Wright noted that Pennsylvania officials are under federal court order to count overseas ballots from Tuesday's Senate primary for another three weeks because absentee ballots were not sent abroad early enough to meet federal deadlines. Sen. Arlen Specter (R) has enough of a lead that the late military ballots are not likely to have any impact, but the fiasco of different rules and standards in treating thousands of late ballots from abroad was a lowlight of the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida.
Short supply
Already voters abroad are complaining of problems in this year's presidential contest. The Pentagon's voting assistance program distributes a postcard that can be sent to any local election office for overseas citizens to request an absentee ballot. Advocacy groups including Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad usually get hundreds of thousands of the postcards to distribute at events and to members to encourage voting. But the groups said embassies in Asia and elsewhere have already run out of postcards. Voters can print a copy of the postcard from the Internet.
"It's a lot more effective to hand them the actual [postcard] than to tell them to go to the Internet to print it out," said Ryan King of Republicans Abroad. Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), John B. Larson (D-Conn.) and Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) on Wednesday wrote to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to complaining of shortages and asking him to order printing of more postcards.
"If there's a shortage, we are not aware of it," Abell said. " If we were to get such a report, we would respond immediately to overwhelm them with the necessary materials."
