Pentagon denying U.S. citizens overseas right to vote

[SoCalDemocrat]

This is despicable. Truly despicable. The Bush administration through the Pentagon has denied U.S. citizens travelling and living abroad from voting. Of course U.S. military personnel will have no such restrictions placed on their ability to register to vote. Statistically, the military votes largely Republican, while other Americans living abroad largely vote Democrat.

Pentagon blocks site for voters outside U.S.

Jennifer Joan Lee IHT
Monday, September 20, 2004

PARIS - In a decision that could affect Americans abroad who are not yet registered to vote in the Nov. 2 presidential election, the Pentagon has begun restricting international access to the official Web site intended to help overseas absentee voters cast ballots.

According to overseas-voter advocates who have been monitoring the situation, Internet service providers in at least 25 countries - including Yahoo Broadband in Japan, Wanadoo in France, BT Yahoo Broadband in Britain and Telefónica in Spain - have been denied access to the site of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, apparently to protect it from hackers.

In an e-mail addressed to a person in France who had tried to access the Web site, the Federal Voting Assistance Program's Web manager, Susan Leader, wrote: “We are sorry you cannot access www.fvap.gov. Unfortunately, Wanadoo France has had its access blocked to U.S. government Web sites due to Wanadoo users constantly attempting to hack these sites. We do not expect the block to be lifted."

In Washington, a Pentagon spokeswoman reached by telephone confirmed that a number of Internet service providers worldwide had been blacklisted to thwart hackers. The spokeswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Ellen Krenke, declined to comment further.

The Federal Voting Assistance Program, which was designed to help both military and civilian voters abroad, is under the authority of the Defense Department.

Asked whether any other government Web sites had been blocked, a Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.

“The government is probably the most common victim on the Web because it's a political target," said Jimmy Kuo, a research fellow with McAfee, a U.S. company that specializes in computer security.

"There are certainly elements outside our country who would want to disrupt our voting procedure, and interfering with a voter registration site would certainly affect that," Kuo said.

"It would disenfranchise all those people who would want to vote using this process," he said.

Although voter registration forms are available from other sources, being unable to download the forms from the site has frustrated expatriates in many countries. That frustration is growing with the approach of the Oct. 2 deadline for registration in most U.S. states.

Brett Rierson, co-founder of OverseasVote.com, a Hong Kong-based, pro-Democratic Web site that provides voting instructions as well as a link to the Federal Voting Assistance Program, said he had been bombarded with complaints from users who cannot enter the government site.

“We started receiving e-mails as we launched in February, but they were sporadic and there was no general pattern,” Rierson said.

“As of Aug. 23, the numbers of e-mails per day have expanded drastically," he said. "Eighty percent of complaints have come from the past two weeks alone, and they come from countries that have the largest populations of overseas Americans.”

Rierson's organization, which has been monitoring the Pentagon restrictions, found that at least 25 Internet service providers had been blocked.

Annalee Newitz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit San Francisco group for protecting people's digital rights, said: “It's extremely ironic that the government is doing nothing to address the security of electronic voting machines" in the United States, "which have been proven to be vulnerable to hacking, yet they block Web sites for expatriate Americans.”

Those who cannot access the voting assistance program site can go to a new site, www.overseasvote2004.com, which promises to help absentee voters complete registration "in five minutes." It features state-specific registration forms that voters can print out and fax and mail back to their states.

Alternately, voters can go to their U.S. embassies or contact their local representatives of Democrats Abroad or Republicans Abroad for a registration form.

Meanwhile, some critics question the effectiveness of the Pentagon's restrictions on the government site.

“It's like putting a Band-Aid on a broken dam,” Newitz said. “Good hackers will always find a way into the system. The real concern should be protecting the Web site, not shutting down access to it.”

International Herald Tribune

URL: http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=539597.html

[SoCalDemocrat]

1. Military overseas more likely now to support Kerry vs. Bush

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-07-13-troopvote_x.htm

The Federal Voting Assistance Program, a small office that is part of the Defense Department, said in a written answer to questions that it is "confident the military mail system will allow servicemembers to send in absentee ballots in a timely fashion." The office said it is working with the U.S. Postal Service to give priority to ballots in specially marked envelopes.

More than 4 million Americans live abroad, including servicemembers and their families, embassy workers and civilians whose jobs take them overseas.

Potential impact on election

Studies show that military families are more likely to vote, and more likely to support Republicans, than others. But this year, military experts say long deployments, low morale and some disaffection with President Bush's foreign-policy decisions may erode the GOP's edge. Any problems with military voting could have the greatest impact on battleground states such as Florida, Missouri and New Mexico, which have large military populations.

In 2000, an estimated 29% of military personnel who wanted to vote did not get absentee ballots or received them too late. The impact was felt particularly in Florida, where hundreds of military absentee ballots weren't counted because they arrived late, lacked postmarks or had problems with signature verification.

A study by the Pentagon at that time found that three-quarters of overseas troops it interviewed reported problems in voting. In a separate study, the GAO found that instructions from Washington to help troops vote were often given low priority in the field. The new studies this year suggest that those problems haven't been fully addressed.

[mirandaod]

4. They're getting desperate,

But it's only the last minute voters that they'll stop. We've been registering voters here in Europe for months, using the federal post card application. There are also other websites which still work: www.overseasvote2004.com and www.tellanamericantovote.com. People can also contact the consulates for help. Also, Democrats Abroad can help. I know Democrats Abroad is operating in Iraq, so they'll be able to help those they can reach.

[Brian_Expat]

2. Expats wanting to register can go to this web site

http://www.tellanamericantovote.com

It works fine from any country in the world.

[SoCalDemocrat]

3. Pentagon interfering in a federal election

Isn't the Pentagon interfering with a federal election violating some sort of laws? Military intervention into the electoral process? They can't be serious can they? All the site does is let people register who can prove their citizenship. How is that in danger of being hacked?

Any hacker out of gradeschool could spoof an IP or use a relay anyway to make it appear as if they were accessing the site from within the U.S.

This is B.S., we should not stand for our Democracy to be trampled upon by the industrial military machine in the Pentagon and the Bush administration.

[Tripmann]

5. Americans abroad.....

get to see the real news reported on real news channels. Of course they're going to vote for Kerry. I have a friend who came from Boston for a two week holiday in Dublin, Ireland. After the two weeks of warts-and-all reporting from Baghdad he has changed his mind and voting for Kerry.

I do have to admit though, he's voting for Kerry simply because he's not Bush!

Tripmann

[Aunt Anti-bush]

6. What I want to know is...

how the heck are they getting away with this?

[Moderator]

7. SoCalDemocrat

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
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Thank you.


DU Moderator

[randr]

8. I wonder if this is affecting the christian missionaries?

There are reported to be up to 50,000 Mormons alone out of the country at any time.
Are any of these people having problems?