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"The National Guard Association of the United States and more than a dozen other fraternal military groups asked a
U.S. judge for permission to intervene in and oppose a lawsuit filed by President Barack Obama’s campaign
challenging the fairness of Ohio’s early voting rules." <snip>

http://www.newsmax.com/US/obama-ohio-military-voting/2012/08/03/id/447524

And yet, every election cycle it's the kool-aid drinkers on the Left that whine about election suppression because the Right thinks people should show valid i.d. to vote.

Regards,

Someone trying to score political points

Oh no. The Democrats are trying to stop a predominantly conservative demographic from voting! Its not like the Republicans would ever do such a thing! *looks at immigration reform*

Business as usual. Move along.

The campaign sued Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Jon Husted on July 17, claiming the state’s two-tiered early voting process violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection under the law.

State law allows families of armed forces members and civilians overseas to vote through the Monday before an election while early voting for all other Ohioans ends the preceding Friday. The campaign seeks a court order invalidating the statutes.

While I completely support making it easy for servicemembers overseas to vote, I'm not sure why other citizens of Ohio can't have the same voting period.

How about we just let everyone vote early instead?

Mannahnin wrote:

The campaign sued Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Jon Husted on July 17, claiming the state’s two-tiered early voting process violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection under the law.

State law allows families of armed forces members and civilians overseas to vote through the Monday before an election while early voting for all other Ohioans ends the preceding Friday. The campaign seeks a court order invalidating the statutes.

While I completely support making it easy for servicemembers overseas to vote, I'm not sure why other citizens of Ohio can't have the same voting period.

A voting period has to end sometime.
The citizens of Ohio have plenty of opportunity to get to the polls.
It's obscene to try to prevent service members, many in combat areas, from voting because they tend to vote predominately one way.

And of course, it's blatantly hypocritical of the Left to try to do so, after all of the whining they do about vote suppression. It proves their only real concern is winning at any cost.

G'day

I'll be waiting for the version of the story that doesn't cite Fox News as a source.

I assume there is more to it than the article makes it out to be - at least regarding the supposed reason for such a move. As ex-military myself, I'm also not quite sure why the military would need special privileges when there's already an early voting that everybody can do. How difficult is it, exactly, for active duty personnel to vote in the US? I honestly don't know - maybe Jihadin or someone else can explain.

Well its also a silly idea, cause a lot of young military members vote Democrat. The lower ranks are fairly well split between the parties. Its the officer corp that tends to be overwhelmingly conservative.

LordofHats wrote:*looks at immigration reform*
Business as usual. Move along.

What does immigration reform have to do with voter suppression?

If someone legally immigrates here and becomes a citizen, they have the right to vote.

If someone is in the country illegally, than naturally they have NO RIGHT TO VOTE.

End of story. Move along.

Cheers!

Phanatik wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:

The campaign sued Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Jon Husted on July 17, claiming the state’s two-tiered early voting process violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection under the law.

State law allows families of armed forces members and civilians overseas to vote through the Monday before an election while early voting for all other Ohioans ends the preceding Friday. The campaign seeks a court order invalidating the statutes.

While I completely support making it easy for servicemembers overseas to vote, I'm not sure why other citizens of Ohio can't have the same voting period.

A voting period has to end sometime.
The citizens of Ohio have plenty of opportunity to get to the polls.
It's obscene to try to prevent service members, many in combat areas, from voting because they tend to vote predominately one way.

If, in your subjective opinion, the citizens of Ohio have plenty of opportunity to get to the polls, someone else could just as easily hold the opinion that the overseas voters have plenty of opportunity to cast their votes as well. Or think it's obscene to limit the voting rights of non-military voters.

Phanatik wrote:And of course, it's blatantly hypocritical of the Left to try to do so,

As you should know, but either can't understand or don't care to acknowledge, the Left is not a monolithic thing and is not trying to do this. A particular politician's campaign organization is.

Phanatik wrote:... after all of the whining they do about vote suppression. It proves their only real concern is winning at any cost.

The primary concern of a political campaign organization is winning the campaign. This shouldn't shock anyone.

Phanatik wrote:What does immigration reform have to do with voter suppression?

Republicans block immigration reform because in all likely hood legalized immigrants would vote Dem not Rep.

My point was that both parties regularly do things in an attempt to limit the rights of the opposing party's voting blocs. Blocking legalization of immigrants, limiting early voting, gerrymandering in general. It happens everyday. Nothing new here, or shocking.

Lynata wrote:I'll be waiting for the version of the story that doesn't cite Fox News as a source.

I assume there is more to it than the article makes it out to be - at least regarding the supposed reason for such a move. As ex-military myself, I'm also not quite sure why the military would need special privileges when there's already an early voting that everybody can do. How difficult is it, exactly, for active duty personnel to vote in the US? I honestly don't know - maybe Jihadin or someone else can explain.

I guess you'll be waiting for the kool-aid version then. Of course you can trust ANYTHING that comes out of huffpo/cnn/msnbc/the used-to-be-big 3.

If you were really ex-military, and you're in Ireland, are you a UK citizen? Why don't you KNOW how hard it is to vote while on active duty overseas?

But don't worry. You need not know anything about it to express your opinion.

Cheers,

Doesn't none of this even matter since who becomes president is decided by the electoral college?

Electoral college votes roughly correlate to the popular vote. Only in very close races, like the Bush Gore race, do we see the Electoral college declare a winner who is not the popular winner (result of winner takes all).

Mannahnin wrote:
As you should know, but either can't understand or don't care to acknowledge, the Left is not a monolithic thing and is not trying to do this. A particular politician's campaign organization is.
The primary concern of a political campaign organization is winning the campaign. This shouldn't shock anyone.

The report is that the obama campaign is behind this.
This flies in the face of the holier-than-thou attitude of the Left.

The left seems pretty much monolithic when every lefty news organization comes out with the same exact talking points as democrat politicians do on the same days. How do I get on THAT email list?

Cheers!

Phanatik wrote:I guess you'll be waiting for the kool-aid version then. Of course you can trust ANYTHING that comes out of huffpo/cnn/msnbc/the used-to-be-big 3.

Eh, still better than Fox imho.
The good thing about the big media outlets is that they rarely directly lie and falsify quotes. Usually it's just omitting stuff or presenting "evidence" from biased sources, so comparing various reports already goes a long way. So I do not think the article lies to the readers' faces, I'd just like to check if it omits anything that might be interesting.

Phanatik wrote:If you were really ex-military, and you're in Ireland, are you a UK citizen? Why don't you KNOW how hard it is to vote while on active duty overseas?

German Air Force. I just emigrated to Ireland about five years ago.
And German elections allow postal ballot, but since Germany isn't the US I have no idea how you guys are doing it.

Phanatik wrote:But don't worry. You need not know anything about it to express your opinion.

That's why I'm asking. Even as a European, I've seen enough spin - especially regarding this election - to know what sort of stuff should be scrutinised. And I'm missing the motif here, so either somebody was really being an idiot (especially for pulling this off that short before election), or there's a bit more to the story.

Their family members become part of the military community for the duration of their orders. I'm taking the civilians overseas as "contractors" for DOD. Think the focus is for the servicemember thats deployed can submit an absentee ballot ahead of schedule so it can be counted before "closing time" with everybody else. Mail coming in from the FoBs to Kandahar and Bagram are if I remember like 4th on the list of "Priority"

Mail coming out of Afghanistan comes out on whatever AF bird thats either designated as its primary mission to carry mail or "Space A" and fills whatever space on the aircraft avalible. From there is flown to Kuwait and repeats the process again

As for how mail is transported in aircraft its not just thrown in to fill space
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/systems/463L-pallet.htm

Transport of mail from the outer FoBs are conducted by rotary wing. Either a Blackhawk or Chinook. Weight limitation and volume of cargo is a pain to figure

Blackhawk
11 seats/2300 lbs max

Chinook
56 seat/5300 lbs max

Rotary ring operations are planned 30-60 days out. We have whats called "Ring Routes" thats schedule every week. So one week might have the FoB seeing the "Ring" time a week and the following week twice. Mind you that one FoB is amongst 5-8 FoB's being visited by the same aircrafts on the ring route. So mail is backed up like 5-8 days. There are other rotary wing operations occuring to that might also hit the FoB on one of their stops so they can get mail out to. Mission dictates though so a good portions of rotary wing operations won't be able to handle mail service


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Holy crap this took off while I was thinking

Both major parties in the US mostly express themselves in the media using talking points.

It's part of the breakdown and polarization of our national dialogue, and part of why so many of us are Independents and refuse to join either party.

The Obama campaign has a specific purpose for existing, as does every campaign for every politician. It =/= The Left, even if the Left were some sort of monolithic thing, which it's not. The inability of lefties to maintain any kind of unified focus and message is one of the chief political failings and limitations of the Dems. It's kind of their thing.

Its a state perk for the family members of Ohio to vote early. IMMEDIATE FAMILY ONLY.

Hmm, seems like your mail takes a bit longer than that in the German forces, then - likely because your deployments tend to be a lot bigger, obviously, at least for warzone countries like Iraq, Afghanistan.

I could see that being an issue, then. Not sure how much an additional three days would change there, but I understand the criticism a bit better now. I'm just wary of military folks having official special privileges separating them from the people they serve (aside from parades to celebrate and/or honour the service, expressions of recognition and respect are usually best to remain at the discretion of individual civilians), so I paused at the "distinction" sentence in that article. I suppose that opinion is borne entirely out of the "citizen in uniform" culture that the German armed forces propagate, keeping the gap between civilians and soldiers as small as possible.

Anyhow, thanks for the explanation!

Mannahnin wrote:The inability of lefties to maintain any kind of unified focus and message is one of the chief political failings and limitations of the Dems. It's kind of their thing.

I think it's the Pandora's box of disparate special interest groups on the left that must give democrat politicians campaign nightmares.

The Right seems more focused - "bitter clingers" as expressed by Obama.

Best,

P.S. As ex-Navy, I take this issue very seriously, which is why I'm more phanatical about it.

I remember one of the major issue we are having with getting mail out. Gorilla boxes (cheap foot lockers) Everybody collects a huge amount of DVD, books, items from bazaars, extra boots we recieved plus additional expendable military clothing. So a good chunk of that mail is freaking footlockers.

Lynata I beleive your (germany) mail is mostly flown out of Bagram on german AF birds.

I understand Civilians overseas and such voting early, But why those that are here get to vot early? That makes little to no sense.

LordofHats wrote:Oh no. The Democrats are trying to stop a predominantly conservative demographic from voting! Its not like the Republicans would ever do such a thing! *looks at immigration reform*

Business as usual. Move along.

One group has the right to vote, the other does not.
You are as hyperbolic and misleading as the title of this thread.

The Gore campaign tried the same trick in his presidential bid and it blew up in his face, alienating a fair chunck of voters.

I remember that. (Gore) Talk about PO a bunch of people off

hotsauceman1 wrote:I understand Civilians overseas and such voting early, But why those that are here get to vot early? That makes little to no sense.

I suppose that could be the reason behind this move. Though I'd still say it was somewhat stupid and clearly a self-pwn. Apparently this move came as a reaction to another change made earlier by the Republican governor. Still, the reaction this would evoke was quite foreseeable, and I still don't see how a change of this law would have any effect on the actual election results. Apart from now driving people away from Obama's camp, obviously...

Might have been more clever to just extend it for everyone - equality without actually taking something away. It's just a three days difference, but as you can see people will make a big deal out of it because of it being perceived as an attack on something that's considered a principle.

Well, I think it would be a good idea to extend the voting period. Not everyone may be able to make it to the polls on polling day. Maybe they've got a long work shift or something.

Having, say, a three day voting period would allow for busy schedules to fit it in.


Personally, I think Voting should be required for you to have certain rights. If you don't vote, you don't deserve the protection granted by the establishment.

Phanatik wrote:
A voting period has to end sometime.
The citizens of Ohio have plenty of opportunity to get to the polls.
It's obscene to try to prevent service members, many in combat areas, from voting because they tend to vote predominately one way.

This doesn't prevent service members and civilians living abroad from voting, it forces them to vote within the same period as all other Ohio citizens, or hypothetically would were the Obama campaign to win the suit. I fail to see the issue as the relevant groups should know full well when the deadline for casting their ballots is.

Phanatik wrote:
And of course, it's blatantly hypocritical of the Left to try to do so, after all of the whining they do about vote suppression. It proves their only real concern is winning at any cost.

Wait, so it hypocritical for the left to engage in vote suppression while complaining that the right is engaging in vote suppression, but not for the right to complain about vote suppression while engaging in vote suppression?

That's an impressive degree of cognitive dissonance even before we consider the ridiculousness of claiming that a broad group can be hypocritical because certain members of it made certain statements.

Phanatik wrote:
It proves their only real concern is winning at any cost.

Welcome to politics, please enjoy your stay.

How is the Right suppressing the Voters?

Immigrants can't vote unless they become citizens, at which point they arn't Immigrants anymore. and Illegal Immigrants can't ever become Citizens(and should never be allowed to do so)

And demanding ID at the polls is simply a defense against Vote fraud.