What's up with the military ballots?

[96Qowner]

Have you covered that in the forum yet? In one precinct or another, I keep hearing that they're having trouble getting the military ballots out in time. In one case, it was because of a last minute change in the ballot, but that was a couple weeks ago. They said the time to and from the printer and the overseas shipping might take too long.

Um ... Kinko's? Mebbe FedEx? Or here's an idea - why not print them overseas? There's these new-fangled internets we could use. I suspect the military has some beefy printers.

It's true there might be some sort of principled constitutional or security problem, but the issue seems so 20th century. Seriously? We can't get a ballot to every soldier in time? We can skype most of 'em, for pete's sake.

[srellim234]

I agree there is no excuse for the ballots not to get to them in a reasonable amount of time. As you say, maybe they could be printed out over there. Members of the military stationed overseas should be allowed extra time to return them and still have them counted. In a lot of areas they are allowed extra time.

I don't agree with allowing them to electronically vote because we can't even get secured electronic voting stateside. I want to see a return to paper ballots for the paper trail they leave.

[96Qowner]

Yeah, I read your link in the other thread about federal Law and set dates, so I see the inflexibility, and what all the fuss is about. It's always hard to get the government to be accountable, even the counties, I guess. I dunno. Maybe some legislator will write a bill. It's Federal, so that's a toughie.

And electronic voting gives me the willies. I've spent too long using computers and avoiding viruses and worms and spoofing and ... No one is ever going to get me to believe that each and every electronic device can't be corrupted. Although ... what about the simple ballot scanners they use? Hm, that's disturbing, too.

Actually, in the greater scope of things, are these ballots terribly significant? It occurs to me that a lot of Americans don't get to vote because of their particular job needs about now. They're on the road, or working at a remote jobsite.

It sucks to see your own county people screw up your chance to vote, when you're trying to manage their interests overseas without getting killed or maimed.

[AZhitman]

...yet there's people here, bending over backwards to help non-citizens vote.

(...dammit, I have work to do - quit sucking me into discussions...)

[96Qowner]

Don't read the other thread then.

[srellim234]

96- I've never understood the rush to count votes and broadcast results being more important than making sure the vote count is accurate. Government and news organizations need to quit trying to have results before the polls even close. What's wrong with allowing cities, counties, states the time to count?

We have a set lame duck time period. If it's too short, extend it. In the meantime, the government (including we, the people) need to get it right. Accuracy over speed.

As nervous as we are about vote scanners, what is the accuracy of a Scantron with a simple counter compared to the ability of all these computerized systems to be hacked? I'm asking because I really don't know. Are we better off having teams of counters hand-counting paper ballots and keeping computers out of it? How easily will parties infiltrate the counters to quietly add to counts for their side? Tough to come up with a solution but I sure don't trust the current systems.