Bush to commit troops to battleground states?

[shockingelk]

I recently started another thread speculating that the timing of the decision to bring home troops deployed in Europe and Asia could be primarily political. Here's more interesting speculation that the movement might be political:

There is a decided preference among families of career military personnel to vote Republican. The article linked to above states that it could be as many as 100,000 "family members" and "support staff", other articles state the numbers of actual troops brought back home could be as large as 70,000. It will be interesting to watch how quickly the movement happens and to what states they're moved - at least two states which are spoken of as hanging in the balance - Florida and North Carolina - have large military installations.

Bush had made sure he was on record as saying it was his intention to "at some point in time" withdraw troops from overseas, this is from the 2000 presidential debates:

I am also on record as saying in some point of time, I hope our European friends become the peacekeepers in Bosnia and in the Balkans. I hope that they put the troops on the ground, so that we can withdraw our troops and focus our military on fighting and winning war.

Interesting that the delay of acting on his of his intention would seem to have allowed them to figure out what states troop commitments are most needed before they or others are rotated back overseas where they're also needed. :tinfoilhat:

[Catt03]

1. Bush is running a Kerry Campaign

First...he follows Kerry all over the country.

Second....when Kerry makes a point of * failed policy i.e. troops, Bush makes a statement and the troops are coming home.

We need to tell the Bush Campaign to get a subscription to Policy 101
by John Kerry instead of plagiarizing.

[chuck555]

2. You are so right.

Soldiers and families outside the USA can't vote. Rove skillfully brought them home because they always vote Republican. Bush is a shoe in now.

[shockingelk]

3. well, no

Soldiers stationed outside the US can indeed vote via absentee ballot. The issue is in what states they're registered to vote in.

You do bring up the possibility that if their spouse is not an American citizen, they may be able to register to vote if they taker up US residency. I don't know the regulations on that.

[July]

5. Resident aliens cannot vote. nt

[shockingelk]

7. What about spouses of American citizens?

I do believe I'm correct in thinking spouses of American citizens with permanent US residency automatically qualify for citizenship.

[July]

9. Marriage to an American does not confer automatic citizenship.

It may (I don't know if it does or does not) make it easier when one applies for citizenship -- if the marriage is clearly a legitimate one, but a resident alien married to an American would still have to go through the application process like any other alien, and only after citizenship is granted would he or she be permitted to vote.

[Catch22Dem]

4. Absentee

And I was in the military for 8 years (4 overseas) and I've never voted for a repuke in my life.

[atreides1]

6. Where Do You Put Them

Florida has very little infrastructure to support a large influx of military personnel and their families, North Carolina may have Ft Bragg but most of the post consists of training areas, not well suited for families either.

And does anyone have any idea of how long it takes to move just one military family, take a guess at how long it will take to move 70,000
to 100,000 people. I know, I was active duty Army, and I am now married to a USAF Master Sergeant. The movement of one family is a major logistics nightmare, think of the chaos when it come to moving as many people as they say will be moving.

It took 15 days for the Army to get me from Hawaii, to Kentucky, and then to Saudi Arabia in the first Gulf War, and then another 3 days to get me to the unit I had been assigned to. 18 days total, and that was during the build up for the ground attack. I didn't have to arrange for movement of household goods, or to ship a vehicle, or to get plane tickets for my family.

So anyone who really believes that the military is going to be able to get 70,000 to 100,000 people back to the states by November is on drugs. And if anyone needs a good example of how effective the military is in getting things done, just look at how long it took them to get body armor issued to all the troops in Iraq.

[shockingelk]

8. Thanks for the info

I do recognize that moving personnel around is something that doesn't happen overnight.

But I read rampant speculation here that they're "timing" the capture of OBL to coincide with the election. If it's reasonable to believe they can successfully plan that, having put in place plans to quickly change the residency of military personnel does not seem far-fetched.

They blatantly and successfully disenfranchised minority voters in FL. Who would have believed it if in 2000 somebody said, "I don't know how they're going to do it, but they could be planning on making sure a lot of black people don't vote in Flordia"?

[jmowreader]

10. I was a voting officer. This won't work in his favor

Soldiers vote in their homes of record--as a resident of Benewah County, Idaho, I always voted on Benewah County's ballots. IIRC there were always three--one for the statewide/national elections, one for the local elections and one for referendums.

This is why Bush was so frantic to get absentee military ballots from specific Republican strongholds in Florida.

You can also figure in a new factor--soldiers have figured out that Bush is not their friend.

Now let's play some what-ifs. What if very specific soldiers were moved to very specific locations? Here I mean Massachusetts and New York-based soldiers, who come from places where taxes are relatively high, moved to North Carolina, where taxes are relatively low. Home of record also determines taxation; if I'm a Mass resident I pay Mass taxes. The appeal will be less to someone who comes from Washington, where there is no income tax, or Idaho, where there is one that exempts all military pay earned outside of the borders of the state. (Translation: except for airmen at Mountain Home AFB and recruiters, no Idaho-resident GI would ever change his home of record, and Bush doesn't really need to mess with them; he has Idaho in the bag.)

[shockingelk]

11. It as if you think this administration is above dirty tricks

Just think about it: In 2000, they hired a data company to come up with an inaccurate list of felons to intentionally disenfranchise minority voters. Think. About. It.

Is it below them to hire a data company to come up with lists of soldiers deployed overseas that would most likely switch their voter registration if moved to a particular state? Are they really above that?

Maybe you know better, but my impression is that career officers heavily vote Republican and it seems they would also be the ones likely to register wherever they're based. How are you going to use your parents' address if they've been dead 10 years?

[jmowreader]

12. How the Home of Record works

Unless you change it, the populated place you lived in on the day you joined the military is the place you will always live as long as you are in the military.

I believe I alluded to Bushco Dirty Tricks in my original note, but let's look at the game they could play: move troops who could be encouraged to change their homes of record to battleground states they need.

North Carolina is a battleground state for three services--Army (Ft. Bragg), Air Force (Pope and Seymour Johnson AFBs) and Marines (the bases supporting Camp Lejeune). It has a fairly low tax rate, it's otherwise amenable to the kind of people the military likes, and it has 15 electoral votes. All one needs do to help move that state into the guaranteed-GOP column, according to Bushco, is to fill up the 82nd and 1st Corps Support Command as much as possible with people from California, Massachusetts and New York, transfer a lot of C-130 crews from Charleston AFB, South Carolina (a good solid GOP state) to Pope AFB and restaff those crews with people from heavily-Democratic states, then make sure those people know about how wonderful it would be if they'd change their HOR to North Carolina. Either that, or just make sure these people "accidentally" sign the form to switch their HOR to NC while inprocessing. Anyone who's ever been in the military knows you sign a good inch-thick stack of paperwork the first full day you're at any new installation and you don't know what half of it's for; what's one more mundane piece of paper?

This Bushco calculus omits the fact that military people aren't stupid and know what Bush is all about. They can't get out, they can't speak their minds without fear of repercussion, their benefits are being eroded, and they could die for no good reason at all. Under those circumstances, would you vote for the sumbitch who's doing you in?

[shockingelk]

13. I am reading something different

http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/militarylaw1/a/homeofrecord.htm says Home of Record and state of legal residency can be in different states, and you vote in your state of residency.

One changes one's state of legal residency by filling out DD Form 2048 which requires only "physical presence in the new State with the simultaneous intent of making it your permanent home and abandonment of the old State of legal residence/domicile."

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. Bush Obfuscation. Rumsfailed Reveals: Will Take Several Years

This troop redeployment is Bush* obfuscation. Rumsfailed reveals that it will actually take several years for it to occur. So it won't reduce the back-draft in that time with regard to Iraq.

edit: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5979086