WASHINGTON, DC – Sources confirmed today that hundreds of thousands of military absentee ballots were delivered hours after the deadline for them to be counted, with preliminary counts showing that they would have overturned the vote in several states and brought a victory for Governor Mitt Romney .
Officials say the ballots were delivered late due to problems within the military mail system. Tracking invoices show the ballots sat in a warehouse for a month, then they were accidentally labeled as ammunition and shipped to Afghanistan. At Camp Dwyer, Marine Sergeant John Davis signed for them and was surprised at the contents.
“I told Gunny we got a bunch of ballots instead of ammo,” Davis told investigators earlier today. “He told me to file a report of improper delivery and that the chain of command would take care of it. We didn’t hear anything for three weeks. While we were waiting we came under fire so we dumped a bunch of them in the Hescoes. We didn’t dig those ones back out.”
After military officials realized the initial error, the ballots were then sent back to the U.S. but suffered a series of setbacks.
Twelve boxes of ballots were dropped overboard during delivery to the USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) in the Persian Gulf, then while the ship sailed to Bahrain, postal clerks allegedly pocketed whatever ballots they wanted.
The remaining absentee ballots were loaded onto a C-130, but the flight was delayed until November 1st so the crew could get tax free pay for the month. Once the ballots arrived stateside they were promptly mailed to each state’s counting facility, reaching their final destination on November 7th.
“It’s a shame,” Rear Admiral John Dawes said when asked for comment. “I expected a delay so I ordered that everyone cast their votes eight months ago. It’s really unfortunate that our mail system failed us and directly affected the course of history.”
Upon hearing the news, angry Republicans have begun a demand for a recount, but most military absentee voters have shrugged off the news, with many wondering whether the care packages their families sent six months ago were ever going to show up.
Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2012/11/military-absentee-ballots-delivered-one-day-late-would-have-swung-election-for-romney/#ixzz2BgARwA5Y
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Some absentee ballots may be lost
FRom the Military Times.
Find out what to do if yours is late
By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Nov 2, 2012 14:17:52 EDT
A contractor in Afghanistan who was worried about his absentee ballot getting lost said his ballot has now reappeared in the U.S. Postal tracking system.
But he still questions why there was a five-week delay.
The tracking system was updated sometime the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 2 to reflect that his ballot had reached a New York mail facility. Early that same morning, the contractor sent an email to Military Times expressing concern that his county elections clerk in Texas had not received his ballot or his co-worker’s ballot by Nov. 1, although they mailed the ballots Sept. 27. “The Bagram Airfield Army post office placed Express mail tracking numbers on them, placed the ballots in an orange ‘Ballot Box,’ and probably in a dedicated mail bag.
“If our ballots got lost, how many other ballots are lost as well?” he wrote. Their mail travels through the military postal system in Afghanistan along with troops’ mail and other civilians’ mail.
Earlier Friday, the U.S. Postal Service tracker showed those ballots were still in Bahrain, and had been sitting there since Sept. 30.
It’s unknown whether other ballots may have been affected.
DoD spokeswoman Air Force Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan said Friday that to her knowledge, ballots were not stuck in Bahrain.
She said DoD has verified that all absentee ballots at Bahrain have "departed the Bahrain Military Postal Facility on a [U.S. Postal Service]-contracted air carrier destined for a U.S.P.S. international service center in the United States."
U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Katina Fields confirmed that her agency is working with military postal service officials to determine what happened to the ballots.
"We are investigating reports of possible missing military election ballots. We take this situation very seriously and expect to resolve this matter as quickly as possible," Fields said.
Once the ballots reach the U.S., they are the responsibility of the U.S. Postal Service. Until then, they are the responsibility of the Military Postal Service Agency.
The contractor in Afghanistan has mailed a replacement ballot. Texas will accept absentee ballots mailed from outside the U.S. until Nov. 12, if they are postmarked by Nov. 6.
Military and overseas voters who mailed their ballots by Military Express Mail can check the whereabouts of their ballot using the tracking number and the U.S. Postal Service website. If there’s been plenty of time for the ballot to get there and it hasn’t, voters can mail a backup ballot, the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB). Local election officials have mechanisms in place so that they will only count one ballot.
Republicans seem to get angry about the threat of military voters becoming disenfranchised because their ballots get lost in the mail. Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, John McCain of Arizona, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Marco Rubio of Florida have written a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to “express concerns over another serious failure by the Dod to safeguard the voting rights of our overseas military service members, which we believe could result in the imminent disenfranchisement of thousands.”
the Military Postal Service Agency is aware of “widespread problems experienced by overseas military voters,” and has made numerous recommendations for correcting them, but the most important of these recommendations have not been addressed. As a result, “a large number of service members are unlikely to receive their ballots in time to vote this year.”
At issue is the “redirection” of absentee ballots sent to service members. Deployed military personnel tend to move around a lot, so it takes a while for ballots from their voting districts to find them. The problem is actually even more pronounced for troops returning home after deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, as their ballots can flutter around overseas for a while before following them home to the United States.
The United States Postal Service is quite good at re-directing mail, thanks to its sophisticated Postal Automated Redirection System, but the Dod has not created anything comparable to handle military mail. ”Under the antiquated mail redirection procedures currently used by DoD, the one-way transit time for blank ballots redirected to or from overseas typically ranges from 14 to 50 days, depending on the overseas location and operating conditions,” the Republican senators noted in their letter to Panetta. ”The more efficient PARS system would cut the average transit time for redirected ballots to just three days, according to USPS.”
The senators declare themselves “perplexed” that Obama’s DoD didn’t update its system to cut down on the 14 to 50-day transit time for blank ballots sent to deployed military personnel. It’s especially perplexing given the fire hose of tax money Obama has been willing to spray on far less worthy endeavors. Perhaps it becomes easier to understand when the voting habits of military voters are taken into account.
At any rate, it’s too late to do anything about the current election (good thing it’s not historic or anything like that!) but the senators asked Panetta to “ensure that DoD moves expeditiously to modernize its system for redirecting blank ballots, so that our service members do not encounter the same roadblocks to voting in the next election cycle.”
Additionally, they requested data on “the specific number of service members who requested absentee ballots for the 2012 general election but have yet to receive them due to delays attributable to DoD’s mail forwarding system.” The number of overseas absentee ballots requested this year is down considerably from 2008, with a 70 percent reduction in the battleground states of Virginia and Ohio cited in an October 1 Fox News report.
Senator Cornyn called this “an unacceptable failure by Pentagon leaders to comply with the law and ensure our service members and their families are able to exercise one of the most fundamental rights for which they sacrifice every day.” The Pentagon explained much of the drop-off by noting that both parties held competitive primary elections in 2008, which inspired an abnormally high number of ballot requests, while 2012 requests are roughly comparable with the 2004 election. However, an October report in the Washington Times said that the Pentagon’s own inspector general’s office found requests for assistance to the voter assistance offices on military bases “failed about 50 percent of the time,” fueling the belief among military voter advocates that not everything has been done to ensure America’s soldiers have proper access to the elections they have sworn their lives to defend.
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