Bases work to ensure troops can vote

Area military bases have been working for months to ensure that their troops' votes are counted Tuesday and have new tools to ensure that last-minute ballots reach election offices on time.
Federal efforts to help deployed troops vote have been criticized as cumbersome, but bases have assigned workers to ensure that airmen and soldiers can navigate their way through the absentee ballot process for their home states, and El Paso County officials say they've gone the extra mile for troops registered to vote here.
"We get calls from voting assistance officers frequently and try to expedite things for those folks and their dependents," El Paso County elections manager Liz Olson said. "It's important everyone have the opportunity to vote."
Troops have new options to receive ballots, including e-mail and fax, Olson said.
In Iraq, Maj. Byron Sarchet of Fort Carson's 3rd Brigade Combat Team said election interest has been high among soldiers in Baghdad who have followed the races over the Internet or on satellite television broadcasts.
Sarchet said soldiers have even gotten postcard advertisements from candidates stumping for the Army vote.
Tabbed as the brigade's voting officer, he said hoards of soldiers filed paperwork for ballots after the Democratic and Republican conventions last summer. The brigade doesn't track how many soldiers have voted.
On Tuesday night - Wednesday morning in Baghdad - the major expects to see troops eagerly watching the outcome of the election from half a world away.
"We'll be wide awake," he said in a telephone interview.
Voter turnout among deployed troops was high in 2004, with 73 percent of the military's overseas contingent casting ballots, according to a Defense Department survey. The right of deployed troops to cast votes from the war zone has been guaranteed since 1942, when Congress passed legislation to ensure that millions of troops in World War II could vote in the 1944 campaign.
Mary Foster, who heads voting assistance efforts at Fort Carson, said the modern effort to enable military votes begins long before soldiers deploy.
Along with medical checks and other steps that soldiers go through before heading to Iraq or Afghanistan, they are given the opportunity to apply for absentee ballots in their home states that will be mailed to them in the war zone. Soldiers also get information on how to research state ballot measures.
A government Web site is used to connect troops overseas with their state voting agencies, she said.
Foster said soldiers have been snapping up absentee ballot requests, with more than 40,000 handed out to troops and dependents on Fort Carson.
At Peterson Air Force Base, leaders have also worked to get out the vote.
Gail Whalen, Peterson's voting assistance officer, said every airman at the base has been offered voting help in-person by unit voting officers.
She said airmen who don't get a state ballot on time are given a chance to vote in the election with a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot.
Called a "back-up ballot," it allows troops to hand-write their election picks so their vote can be recorded on Election Day.
Whalen said she's gotten good feedback from airmen eager to make their votes count but that it's too early to say how well the military's voting system has worked.
"We won't know some of it until after the general election," Whalen said.