-Caveat Lector-
Pentagon Will Revise Military Voting Procedures
By Roberto Suro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A02
A Defense Department investigation found no major problems in the handling
of military absentee ballots mailed from overseas for the 2000 election,
but nonetheless the Pentagon will take steps to prevent the kind of
controversy that developed in Florida last year, officials said yesterday.
Although the military postal system already requires postmarks for all
mail, the Pentagon will revise procedures to ensure that no envelopes slip
through without a marking to show when and where they were mailed, said
Charles S. Abell, assistant defense secretary for force management policy.
More than 2,000 absentee ballots cast overseas, most from members of the
armed forces and their families, arrived in Florida last November too late
to be counted with votes cast on Election Day. Scores arrived without
postmarks as required, sparking a bitter dispute between the rival
presidential camps over whether they should be included.
Bowing to demands from George W. Bush's campaign that military ballots
should be counted no matter how they arrived, several Florida county
canvassing boards tallied the overseas ballots regardless of whether they
bore the requisite postmark. Since Bush carried the overseas vote by
nearly 2 to 1, the disputed ballots may have added significantly to the
razor-thin margin of 537 votes by which he carried Florida and thus ensured
his election.
"An important note is that the audit revealed no problems or delays within
the postal system that would have impacted delivery in an unreasonable way
on balloting during this last election cycle," Abell said at a Pentagon
news briefing yesterday.
At the height of the controversy in Florida, William S. Cohen, then the
defense secretary, asked the Pentagon's inspector general to determine
whether procedures for handling overseas absentee ballots had been followed
and whether they needed to be improved.
Much of the 49-page report, which was released yesterday, dealt with
programs designed to encourage voting by service members, their families
and civilian personnel stationed overseas. The recommendations included
improved training on voting procedures and the establishment of a central
location on every base and ship where information on voting would be
distributed.
"Men and women who serve our nation in uniform today and tomorrow are
willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice in providing for the common defense,"
Abell said.
"It's our duty to ensure that the ballots they cast are votes counted."
The military already has an extraordinarily high level of participation in
elections. Some 72 percent of the 258,000 uniformed service members
overseas voted in the 2000 general election. About 50 percent of the
eligible voters in the civilian population voted in 2000 and other recent
presidential elections.
In addition to reviewing policies and regulations, the inspector general
used questionnaires to gauge satisfaction with voter assistance programs
and conducted spot checks of the handling of incoming mail at six military
posts and outgoing mail at three posts. The report did not try to
determine why some ballots were not postmarked as required.
"While the inspector general did identify areas that require additional
work and others in which we can improve, he did not find that the program
failed or that there were systemic breakdowns," Abell said. "It worked,
and we're going to make it better."
At the time of last year's election, Florida law permitted the counting of
overseas absentee ballots that arrived up to 10 days after Election Day.
But to be valid, the law required the ballots to be postmarked by Nov. 7,
the day of the voting. The ballots also had to be witnessed by another
person and the voter had to have formally requested the ballot.
Overseas absentee ballots that arrived before Election Day were counted
along with other votes.
An unknown number of the overseas ballots opened on Nov. 17 lacked
postmarks or otherwise could have been ruled invalid under a strict
interpretation of the law.
At the time, the Bush and Gore campaigns were in a legal and political
battle over the standards that should be used to count ballots cast at the
polls. Al Gore's camp favored a loose reading of the law so as to count
more disputed ballots in counties that he had carried solidly, whereas
Bush's supporters wanted to throw out ballots with imperfections.
When it came to the military ballots, however, the Republicans mounted a
public relations campaign featuring prominent veterans such as former
senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.) to argue against a strict interpretation of the
law when it came to America's men and women in uniform. Under pressure,
the Democrats decided not to challenge overseas ballots that lacked the
required features.
As with many other aspects of the count, Florida's county canvassing boards
came to disparate conclusions on how to handle the overseas ballots.
In the Democratic bastion of Broward County, for example, election
officials rejected 304 overseas ballots for various technical reasons,
including 119 because they lacked postmarks. An examination of ballots by
The Washington Post in several heavily Republican counties in northern
Florida showed that Bush picked up 176 votes that lacked postmarks and
other required features.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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