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8 November 2002
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Voters in the Pacific mostly were no-shows in Tuesday’s midterm election in the United States, if a random check of servicemembers and their families is any indication. All 435 House seats and 34 Senate seats were up for grabs in Tuesday’s election. So were 36 governorships and a slew of ballot initiatives. Most people interviewed said they believe absentee votes can make a difference in close elections. Still, few took the time to apply for their ballots in advance. “I just got too busy with deployments,” said a harried Marine officer as he exited the shopette on Okinawa’s Camp Foster. “Do the votes count? Absolutely. But I just got caught up in other things.” He said he was too embarrassed to give his name. Sue Jones, 36, a spouse at Yokota Air Base, Japan, received her absentee ballot from Oregon but she never got around to voting. “With both of us working and trying to take care of a family … the time came and went,” she said. Jones said without the presidency hanging in the balance, voting seemed less urgent. “Normally we vote all the time, but this year, it wasn’t that hot of a priority, so it sat,” she said of the mail-in ballot. “My husband voted, but I just didn’t register,” said Tina Blevins, an Ohioan who has lived on Okinawa for five years. “I guess you could say my husband’s been doing the voting for us.” For others, time just ran out. “I just got this package in the mail from Washington on Friday,” said a disappointed Camp Foster voter. “I didn’t have the time to wade through all the issues.” According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he was not alone. On the eve of the election, with important issues such as control of the state Legislature and the future of Washington state’s transportation system hanging in the balance, frustrations increased over the delayed issuance of thousands of absentee ballots. Some voters — including military personnel stationed abroad — still didn’t have ballots Monday, the paper reported. The election seemed to have slipped right by soldiers interviewed Wednesday morning at the Army’s Camp Henry in Taegu, South Korea. “Just wasn’t on the radar,” said Spc. Luis Calixto of Largo, Fla. He works in the communications section of the 20th Support Group at Camp Henry. He said he’d forgotten all about the election. “I didn’t even find out till yesterday. I was up at school — air assault,” he said. “So I was out of the loop a while.” Staff Sgt. Cedric Stokes of the 20th Support Group at Camp Henry said he pays close attention to presidential campaigns, but this vote was a different story. He’s from Gainesville, Fla., and works as sergeant in charge at the transportation office on Camp Henry. “No action taken,” Stokes said. “Kind of like — I’m not really familiar with that midterm thing.” An absentee ballot came in the mail, he said, but he didn’t look it over closely. Second Lt. Terrill Lee just arrived a week ago to become executive officer of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 19th Theater Support Command, at Camp Walker in Taegu. He’s been so busy with making his way to South Korea and with leg surgery before that, he said, that he’s lost touch with domestic political news. “I didn’t know anything about it either,” Lee said. “I’ve been out of the net.” But some servicemembers were paying attention and voted. “All our votes count, so I made sure I got my absentee vote in,” said Army Master Sgt. Ottis Pledger, assigned to Fort Buckner on Okinawa. “Our votes are important.” Pledger’s been on Okinawa for the past six years. He said he’s missed few elections. “Sometimes I’ve had difficulty in getting ballots back from my home state,” he said. “But my home state is Arkansas, so you have to take that into account.” But Pledger was in a distinct minority. Lance Cpl. April Alvarez, assigned to Camp Foster, Okinawa, shyly admitted that she failed to vote. “I should have voted, but I just didn’t get around to it,” she said. “They had signs and stuff at work about voting, but I just didn’t. I should have. I believe every vote does count.” Jennifer Urbatch, a dependent who has lived on Okinawa for three years, said she always votes in the States, but let this election slip by. “I just didn’t get around to it,” she said. If anyone thinks absentee votes don’t count, think again. According to The Associated Press, one-third or more of Tennessee’s voters were expected to cast their ballots by Thursday’s absentee vote deadline. The figure is as high or higher in several other states. There’s a trend in the United States to make voting easier, for people outside their home states on election day and for those wanting to avoid the long lines at the polling booths. Almost half of the states now have “no-excuse” absentee voting, meaning people no longer must certify they’ll be out of town or otherwise unable to get to the polls. In Colorado, where exit polling indicates more than one-third of the 2000 turnout was made up of early and absentee voters, both parties encouraged voters to not wait for Election Day. Texas is another “early voting” state, where more than one-third of the votes were cast before Election Day, according to the AP. A total of 171,229 people in the state’s 15 largest counties had cast ballots in person or by mail through last Tuesday, according to the secretary of state’s office. That was up from 93,436 in the same counties through the same period preceding the 1998 general election. But that tally did not include Senior Airman Adam Lewis at Yokota Air Base. Lewis, 21, said he requested an absentee ballot from his home state of Texas, but it never came. He wanted to vote, he said: “I have a voice too.” |
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6 November 2002 As people in the United States cast their ballots Tuesday in an election that could change the balance of power in Congress, some servicemembers in Europe said they
did not file their absentee ballots, either out of frustration with the absentee system or for a variety of personal reasons. All 435 House seats and 34 Senate seats were being contested during the mid-term election. In addition, 36 governorships were up for election and a number of ballot
initiatives were under consideration. Of the military members or family members asked in an informal Stripes canvass at two bases in Germany and one in Spain, most said they passed on voting because of the
hassle of casting their absentee ballots. “I didn’t even register to vote,” said Pfc. Adam Hughes, a Pennsylvania native assigned to the 1st Battalion, 6th Field Artillery Regiment in Bamberg, Germany.
“It’s a little bit of a bother to vote by absentee ballot. It’s just much more convenient in the States.” In Kaiserslautern, Germany, Victor Roman said he had not registered, either. “I haven’t gotten around to it,” Roman said. “I heard there were long lines to do it.” Time was an issue for Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Tyrone Reed, a military working dog handler with the security department at Naval Station Rota, Spain. Reed said he
could not squeeze in time to research the candidates and send in his ballot. “I work so many hours,” Reed said. “I sleep during the day. I wake up, do what I got to do, go to the gym, go to college and go back to work.” Spc. Alvaro Arias, a New York native, said the whole process of voting from overseas is more challenging than it is back in the United States. “It’s difficult voting by absentee ballot, and it’s even more difficult finding the schedule of elections for your home state,” said Arias, from the 71st Corps
Support Battalion in Bamberg. Army retiree Patrick Marsh, who lives in the Kaiserslautern, Germany, area, said he hasn’t voted since 1974 — the year he first entered the Army. Marsh said he didn’t vote in Tuesday’s elections for several reasons, including problems during the 2000 presidential election in which many absentee ballots went
uncounted. “If Florida was caught throwing away absentee ballots, how many states have thrown them away in the past and not gotten caught?” Marsh said. Besides, he said,
“Most of the time I was in the Army, I had to do what my commander said, regardless of what my vote was. Voting is a responsibility, not a privilege. But the minute you
join the military you lose 90 percent of your constitutional rights anyway.” Some military members apparently didn’t share Marsh’s view. Air Force engineer Capt. Chris Dennison, who was questioned in Kaiserslautern, said he voted by absentee ballot. His wife would have, he said, but she did not receive
her voting materials in time. “It’s our patriotic duty,” Dennison said. “It’s our right as a democracy.” Cpl. Steve Elmer, who is a member of the Rota-based Marine Corps Security Force Company Europe, sent in his absentee ballot along with the rest of his platoon. “We all did it together to make sure we were getting out the vote,” said Elmer, whose home of record is in New Jersey. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t
vote.” Although Arias said absentee voting was a bit of a chore, he and Carrie Crowell, a civilian employee from New Jersey, both have voted by absentee ballot before. This
time, they said they didn’t have enough knowledge of the candidates to cast a vote. “Normally I do vote, even by absentee ballot,” Crowell said. “But I don’t get [American Forces Network-Europe] where I live off-post, and there was really a
lack of information on the elections and candidates.” Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Dane Denobriga had a good excuse for not voting this year. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m not a U.S. citizen.” Denobriga is from Trinidad. 6 November 2002 So how many members of the greater American military community in Europe voted? And for whom did they vote? No one knows. And the answer won’t get any clearer in the next few weeks. While it’s possible to determine how people vote at specific precincts in the States, it’s not that simple with the military overseas. “We don’t track that,” said Glenn Flood, a spokesman for the Department of Defense. “It’s not appropriate to do that. You’d have to get into someone’s
personal business.” Americans abroad can vote only via absentee ballot. So it’s not possible for someone to tally up the number of people entering voting booths, much less ask them how
they voted when they leave the building. In the States, it’s often possible to figure out how those living in a specific precinct — such as a military base — voted. But tracking voting numbers for the
military overseas? “It’s kind of like nailing Jell-O to the wall,” said Senior Master Sgt. Suzanne Ramey, the voting assistance officer for U.S. Air Forces in Europe. Ramey said she couldn’t guess how many airmen submitted ballots. In fact, she doesn’t know how many airmen, dependents and civilians that the command supports are
even eligible to vote. USAFE, like the services, can track how many people they get to register. That number topped 5,000 this year, a fairly significant chunk of the 32,000 USAFE members. Because the military population is constantly rotating all over the world, officials just can’t add up the totals from a few years and make a conclusion, though. “You constantly have people moving in and out,” said Capt. Gordon Hume, the chief public affairs officer for U.S. Naval Forces Europe. Hume’s command, like the Air Force and Army, encourages servicemembers to register their opinions. But encouragement, and a lot of assistance to facilitate the
process, is all the military can provide. Commanders can’t order those in their units to vote, for instance. But they do encourage them. The military makes a big push to get people to register and get their ballots from their home states in early September. Living overseas
means requesting a ballot and sending it back takes more time. And time and distance can be a factor. “A lot of times people forget,” Ramey said. “Or they become
complacent, living away from their state.” While opening voting booths on base might change that a bit, officials say that’s not an option. For several reasons. “There are a lot of federal regulations and a lot of state regulations on how those polls are run,” Ramey said, making it “virtually impossible” to set up
booths. And coming up with a common ballot could prove to be a logistical nightmare. Sometimes, as Florida proved in the 2000 election, compiling information for a single race can prove challenging. In that election, some ballots believed to have come
from the military overseas voters were challenged because of irregularities. Republicans charged that Democrats wanted to toss them, because the military historically
votes conservatively. But, just as in this election, there’s no way to determine how members of the military abroad actually voted in that election. Or how many of them
vote. “Nobody has to raise their hands and say, ‘I voted,’” Flood said.
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