GI's and Others Might be Able to Vote over the Internet in 2010

The good news snippet of the day.

It looks like some people in the good old US of A recognize that the 21st century is here and are making moves to harness some the modern commo tools we are in possession of. The NY Times had an article out on 8 MAY 10 by Ian Urbina that covers the story on moves to ensure that GI's deployed to the sandbox and other locations might actually have their votes counted by allowing them to cast their ballots via the internet or fax. What a novel idea.

That kind of flies in the face of the normal processes that require the absentee ballots to be mailed out to the troops and returned prior to the election so that as many of them can be disqualified as possible. We've had issues like that in Georgia as have most of the other 49 states, nice to see some interesting numbers cited by the mighty NY Times like:

3 Million overseas voters between GI's and ex-pats living abroad in 2008

22% of their ballots don't get counted due to erratic mail and other "issues"

At 220,000 votes per million, that means 660,000 votes from these american soldiers and citizens abroad did not play a role in the 2008 elections. They voted, they sent the absentee ballot's in, but their voted arrived late or had administrative errors or some other issue and where not counted. Could the 660,000 uncounted votes have effected national and state races in 2008?

Here's another kicker from the same article, 33 states are working on this to ensure that their sons and daughters in uniform are not denied their ballot access rights. Is Georgia one of them? A quick check of the Election Assistance Commission website did not a list of participating states prominently displayed. Perhaps a member of the readership has the time and energy to dig around in there and find out.