Geek Habitat

Let me boil this down. We send American servicemen and servicewomen into harm’s way overseas. We extend their tours of duty and have no clear plan on when they may come home or be rotated out with “fresh” troops.

Election day comes around. Argubly the most important day for any American, thus doubly important to someone serving one’s country on foreign soil. But because we can’t get our acts straight, thousands of ballots cast by U.S. military servicepeople go uncounted every year. And thousands more never get delivered to the servicepeople in time for them to vote!

So, we can deliver precision-guided munitions from the land, sea and air. We can penetrate any air defense grid in the world. We can insert trained snipers, intepreters, demolitions and medical teams into points unknown by common man. But we can’t reliably deliver absentee ballots to the soldiers, and get those same ballots safely home in time to be counted? I call it — “Bullshit”!

Someone’s not trying hard enough. It’s 2004, for goodness sake, not 1904! (And, yes, I’m side-stepping that whole “touch screen voting machine” quagmire for the moment…)