Soldiers Deprived of Right to Vote

The day before the election in November, I choose to highlight the fact that I felt that members of our Military are Being Disenfranchised. Several personal cases were documented in my posts, and I became more uneasy about the disenfranchise of military voters are looking further and who the military usually votes for (Republicans) and who the people who deliver the mail for these voters endorses (Democrats). No accusations were made, but I did feel important questions were raised.

This week the Detroit News had a story about military voters in it. The story is "Study: Mich. soldiers deprived of vote: State is 1 of 16 that doesn't allow enough time to submit ballots." According to a Pew study, Michigan doesn't allow soldiers fighting bad buys overseas enough time to get their votes in, thereby disenfranchising them. Buried at the end of the article was this phrase:

But in 2006, about two-thirds of the estimated 1 million ballots distributed to military and other overseas voters were not counted because they weren't returned, came back too late or had other problems, according to the federal Election Assistance Commission. Estimates are not available on how many in this group were deprived voting rights last year.

This to me is a BIG DEAL- something that should really bother important people- that members of our armed services serving in harms way are being disenfranchised is not trivial. Especially when we consider that in this last election, for some office every vote mattered (see my post Libertarians Screwed Themselves Again by Not-Voting or Voting Libertarian). Is there anything that can be done? If so, it's worth emailing your Congressman about, that I can assure you.