At least 30,000 overseas votes not counted in Presidential e

From Capitol Hill Blue

At least 30,000 overseas votes not counted in Presidential election
By LISA HOFFMAN
Apr 6, 2005, 07:00

The votes of at least 1 in 4 U.S. soldiers and overseas voters in last fall's election never were counted.

That's the conclusion of a recent report by the National Defense Committee, a private, pro-military organization that surveyed local election offices across the country about the number of absentee votes cast and counted in the Nov. 3 election.

In all, more than 30,000 of the 131,000 absentee ballots sent by troops and expatriates to 760 local elections offices around the country were not counted, the report found. Those offices represent about 10 percent of the 7,800 offices nationwide.

This disenfranchisement rate was a bit better than that of the 2000 presidential election, where widespread voting and mail glitches left about 29 percent of the ballots uncounted.

Even so, the organization said its study likely suffered from an undercount of its own that could make the number of troops left voteless last year even larger.

"The disenfranchisement rate we show is bad enough, but we think that our report probably understates the problem because we are relying on voluntary responses from election officials," the report said. [more]

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