Amid continuing concerns about late, missing, or plain incorrect absentee ballots, apparently there are a handful of us expats who are making sure our votes will count - by flying back to the States to vote in person:
While some are making frantic calls to state voting offices or groups representing overseas Democrats or Republicans, others have decided the only solution is to fly to the United States.With all the hubbub about voting irregularities and post-election legal squabbling this year, who can blame them?"George W. Bush is not the right man for the job and that's why I'm paying to get on a plane to make sure I get over and vote," said B. Carter Looney, 39, a U.S. businessman who lives near Frankfurt.
"There's more to the world than just the United States," said Looney, who will spend 26 hours airborne for just three days in Arizona before returning Tuesday after voting.
Looney, overseas for 17 years, voted in every contest before 2000, but said he felt ill for a long time after missing the last election because his absentee ballot arrived too late.
"I vowed it wouldn't happen again," he said.
In fact, there are a couple of pieces on this subject you should check out. The NYT's piece, on the possible impact of the new "provisional ballots", makes me a bit nervous:
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 allows voters whose names cannot be found on local rolls to cast provisional ballots, with election officials making a decision later about whether the vote should count. Election lawyers now say that those ballots could determine the outcome in a handful of states where the presidential race is expected to be extremely close.Yeeks.But because those ballots will have to be considered one by one, there is a real possibility that the outcome of the presidential election will not be known on the morning of Nov. 3 and that it will again turn on court decisions, say election law specialists tracking more than a half-dozen thorny legal issues in the swing states.
"We could be within the margin of litigation in all 10 or 11," said Edward B. Foley, who teaches election law at Ohio State University.
And if that didn't cheer you up enough, the Washington Post has a lovely article on the possible implications of another post-election tussle:
We don't need a repetition of Florida, perhaps on a grander scale. The danger is not simply a delay in knowing who the next president is, or the prospect that he'll be hampered in governing, or the probable fury of the loser's supporters that the election was "stolen." The more unsettling danger is that, having engaged in two rounds of post-election combat, party warlords will make this a permanent part of the political process.No wonder the networks are being extra-cautious this year. Once bitten... twice shy.Election by litigation is a sensationally bad idea. Undertaken piously to guarantee voters' "rights" or to prevent "fraud," it would erode popular confidence in elections' integrity. We'd be bombarded (as we already are) by endless complaints about how compromised or corrupt voting practices have become. Sooner or later, many Americans might cynically conclude that the side with the busiest poll watchers, cleverest lawyers and friendliest judges had secured an unfair advantage
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