Jim Carey: A Test Everyone In The Military Needs To Welcome
Jim Carey: A Test Everyone In The Military Needs To Welcome
About
the Author
Rear Admiral [Ret.] Jim Carey is Chairman of the NATIONAL DEFENSE COMMITTEE and NATIONAL DEFENSE PAC. His background includes duty in cruisers and amphibs, at Naval Beach Group, and in the Pentagon, and naval service from Seaman Recruit to Rear Admiral. He also served in the Reagan and George Bush Sr. Administrations. Further details at The National Defense Committee and The National Defense Political Action Committee.
There’s a DOD-sponsored test coming up next year that every man and woman who wears the uniform of America’s Armed Forces needs to be aware of. It’s important because it determines in part whether your deployed fellow warriors have a say in who leads our nation, or to put it more bluntly, who sits in the seats that have the authority to send you and your buddies into foreign nations and into harms way where you can get killed.
And yeah, I know that we in the military “go where we’re told”, but we in the military also have the well-earned right to get to be a part of selecting the Commander In Chief so we’ve at least had a say in who we feel is the most likely to send us only where we really need to go or conversely, is the least likely to send you off to get shot at or killed in areas that have little to do with the key national interests of our nation.
So you say “Well I already have that choice when I vote”, and of course if you have the option to vote, that’s accurate. But it ends there. Many of our comrades and shipmates don’t have that option when they’re deployed. So you now say “C’mon, this is 2003. Everybody can vote absentee if they want to” to which I respond “BALONEY”.
Sure, if you’re at a shore station or military base and have regular postal service, then military absentee voting is easy if you just apply for your ballot and then get it back in the mail in time. But not everybody in uniform is at a military base. How about submariners on patrol? How about troops in the jungles? How about troops well forward of our lines? I know, they’re far from a majority, but shouldn’t everyone whose life is on the line have a say in who sits in the seats that make the decisions that put their lives at risk? I sure feel they do, and there’s now a way to do it, and it’s not by depending upon snail mail like the current system has for the past 100 + years, and that brings us back to “the DOD test” I referred to when I started this conversation.
The answer to all this is electronic voting because every military unit today has the capability to communicate that way, and thus none of the deployed units would be dependent on the delivery or sending of snail mail. In 2000, there was an absentee voter test of electronic voting and it turned out to be expensive because of all the up-front software and programming that had to be developed, and thus limited in the number of voters that could participate because there wasn’t a lot of money left for actual voter participation. But it DID validate the viability of deployed military personnel to vote electronically.
During next year’s election, there’s a much larger DOD test in the works, again limited, and in this case limited by the number of states and counties that agreed to participate [9 States], but a MUCH LARGER TEST nevertheless. Full details are at www.serveusa.gov I urge you to punch up that URL and see where the test is going to be run and if you can participate, please do so as you could make it possible for those in the military who cannot now vote to do so in all future elections. We are a free nation because we get to freely choose our national leaders. Surely if anyone has earned the right to participate in that choice, it is those who wear the uniform of our nation’s armed forces who can be sent to fight and die by those same elected leaders.
And while you may find this hard to believe, there are persons and groups “out there in America” who do not want you to be able to vote electronically. Shades of Florida 2000 all over again. I’ll leave it up to you to determine where that opposition might be coming from, but I urge you to pay attention to these detractors and their backers, and where their money comes from, because they appear to me to be very much against electronic voting by members of the military. Oh sure, they couch it in such camouflage as “voting via the internet or electronicly is ripe for voter fraud”------ as though the troops on the mess decks of some ship or at the NCO Club on some military base, after taking an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and after agreeing to being ordered into harms way to possibly die for their country, are going to somehow hatch some great revolt and after they finish their 18 hour day are going to launch some giant computer hacking plan to skew a national election. Talk about stretching to make a point, surely we’re not now pointing a finger at the men and women in uniform saying they would abuse electronic voting? Surely the safeguards that allow for trillions of dollars in commerce to flow all around the world via the internet can be used to safeguard electronic votes cast by those who are already pledged to die for the rights of others to vote in freedom?
I just read a few weeks ago about a college computer science professor who, inferring his great knowledge in computer electronic vulnerability, wrote a report on how absentee electronic voting was way too risky and too vulnerable to voter fraud. But it all sounded very credible given his credentials as one who teaches computer science------ perhaps he has a point, right? That was until it was later revealed that he had served for 2-3 years on the Board of Advisors of a company that had a competing technology to that which was being considered for use in absentee voting. So much for his so-called impartial advice.
My advice is------ let’s get on with it. If anyone in our nation needs to absolutely have a guarantee of being able to cast their vote for our national leaders it should be those in uniform who, by the very nature of their obligation are the one’s that our elected national leaders can send into harms way and possible death. Surely we as a nation can go the extra few steps, or even the extra mile, to ensure that submariners at sea with no mail service, and troops in the jungle or desert with no mail service, and troops being deployed and moved all around the world at election time and thus don’t have timely mail service----- surely in this technological era of 2003 and the 21st Century, we can find a way for them to vote without insulting them by insinuating that they would violate their oaths to the Constitution and commit voter fraud. Surely, for these men and women in uniform, we can forego the cold highly-suspect harshness of partisan politics just once in order to provide them with the right to select our national leaders. Surely we can do this. Can’t we? I guess only time will tell.
In the meantime, I urge every member of the armed forces, and every civilian employee of DOD and the Services, and every veteran who ever wore our nation’s uniform, to get behind this 2004 military absentee voter test. Don’t let it get buried on page 47 of the newspaper.
Make sure all of America is aware that this test will take place during the 2004 elections and that there are already forces at work who appear to be trying to stop it or make it fail.
Don’t let them get away with it.
Editors Note: For additional information on military absentee voting, go to www.fvap.gov
