Priorities: Illinois officials miss the deadline to mail military ballots; hand-deliver ballots to inmates
posted at 8:46 am on October 21, 2010 by Cassy Fiano
[ Elections ]
Right now, there are tens of thousands of servicemembers fighting overseas to defend our rights and freedoms. One of America’s most cherished rights is the right to vote. There was a very loud outcry when New York officials somehow missed the deadline to send out military ballots. Well, first it was New York, and now it’s Illinois. And Illinois has miraculously managed to be even more outrageous than New York. While 35 counties failed to mail the military ballots in time, election officials made sure that inmates get the chance to vote by hand delivering ballots to prisons. So those are the priorities in Illinois, huh? The men and women who are putting their lives on the line for us aren’t important enough to get ballots sent to on time, but criminals get theirs hand delivered.
Over 35 counties in Illinois missed the deadline to mail military ballots to our soldiers defending America. But in Chicago, county election officials have taken special steps to ensure that no inmates at the Cook County Jail are unable to cast a ballot.
The Chicago Board of Elections hand delivers ballots to the jail. They don’t even wait for the inmates to apply – they bring the applications with the ballots! Over 2,600 inmates have cast ballots so far – strikingly similiar to the 2,600 soldiers who will likely not recieve a ballot for the Nov 2 election.
It’s bad enough that we have several states letting something as simple as mailing military ballots get screwed up. But Illinois takes shameful to a whole new level. About 2,900 ballots were not sent out, yet election officials still have no formal plan to ensure military votes are counted.
But hey, don’t worry — they’ve got the prisoners covered!
Strangely enough, could the fact that New York and Illinois are both overwhelmingly Democratic states have factored in to this whole military ballot controversy? Military votes, after all, tend to swing Republican. In a corrupt state like Illinois, I wouldn’t put it past them.
Curiously (or maybe not so curiously), this is the city and state that Obama calls home. But where’s the outrage from the Commander-in-Chief? Is he making statements on cable television wanting to know “whose ass to kick” to get this issue resolved? You’d think he wouldn’t stand for this, but apparently he’s too busy smearing the Chamber of Commerce and planning his post-election vacation to care about fighting for the rights of the servicemembers who put their lives on the line to defends ours.
–
Follow Cassy on Twitter and read more of her work at CassyFiano.com and Hard Corps Wife.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Sigh. My state. As far as I know, those guilty face no consequences whatsoever. Really disgusting and depressing.
jwolf on October 21, 2010 at 9:03 AM
Looking for this to be a 2012 occurence in more places than just IL and NY if the GOP somehow fails to take back some part of Congress this year.
Add one other needed investigation to the list of house-cleaning items to begin in January.
johnny alpha on October 21, 2010 at 9:15 AM
This sort of thing needs to be broadcast to/shared with as many outlets as possible.
(This is typical for The Peoples Republic of Illinois.)
coldwarrior on October 21, 2010 at 9:15 AM
Okay, surely some entity has standing to bring suit on this. They violated the MOVE Act.
perries on October 21, 2010 at 10:02 AM
wtf?! Unbelievably outrageous. What can we do about this?
rrpjr on October 21, 2010 at 10:04 AM
We can humbly petition AG Holder to send a few Black Panthers to check it out.
Seriously, in almost every election you hear about a judge somewhere who orders voting precincts to be kept open an extra hour or two because people are still waiting to vote. A naive citizen might suppose that the egregious violations in NY and IL are just as bad and just as needy of judicial intervention.
jwolf on October 21, 2010 at 10:10 AM
This happened in Pennsylvania in 2006 – a local TV news station caught some Democrat volunteers red-handed delivering ballots to prisoners, even felons who were not supposed to be voting. Meanwhile the state ignored deadlines for military ballots. Only after some serious screaming from the public did Ed Rendell insist on delaying the official election results unitl all the military ballots can be counted.
They are pushing polls right now to show a lot of these Senate races being close so they can pull off the fraud and kill the military votes, and nobody will notice. Like Hugh Hewitt says, “If it ain’t close they can’t cheat!”
rockmom on October 21, 2010 at 11:00 AM
well, people need to go jail. Once we get congress, we can investigate these corrupt blue states, eh?
joeindc44 on October 21, 2010 at 11:47 AM
Wouldn’t this be a great time for our Commander in Chief to guarantee these vote WILL BE COUNTED, regardless? Wouldn’t one executive order simply make it impossible to not count them? The entire nation should know that Obama chose not to step up to the plate on this issue.
Rovin on October 21, 2010 at 12:16 PM
If you are in the military on overseas duty, or concerned about someone in the military overseas getting their ballot, go to this site and use it as a resource for help.
http://www.fvap.gov/
or here:
https://www.overseasvotefoundation.org/
This has been an issue as long as I have been voting while on overseas service and as an overseas civilian.
Some, such as Cassie, would like to present this as a partisan issue. It isn’t. Civilians overseas face the same issues as servicemen and they trend Democrat, and represent a much larger number of eligible voters. Military votes get much more attention, resources, and support than US civilians overseas when it comes to voting.
We have made enormous progress because of the bipartisan legislation mandating the 45 day rule. Texas used to be terrible and now it has a very efficient system thanks to the new law and pressure from a range of organizations.
It would be great but pointless since it is down to states and counties.
lexhamfox on October 21, 2010 at 1:55 PM
I guess it’s pretty clear when dems talk about disenfranchising voters they are referring to felons, not soldiers.
THEY’RE DISGUSTING SCUM.
dogsoldier on October 21, 2010 at 2:31 PM
Wouldn’t this be a great time for our Commander in Chief to guarantee these vote WILL BE COUNTED, regardless?
Rovin on October 21, 2010 at 12:16 PM
I think their plan is to make sure that all those who vote will be counted, which is why they put illegal aliens and felons on the voter rolls, block purges of invalid names, and stop ballots heading to soldiers.
What needs to happen is that every one and only those who are eligible to vote should have that opportunity, and their vote needs to be counted, and only once.
The lefty bureaucrats want their friends to win, and as long as they win they don’t care what damage they do to the system, because they figure if they’re in charge, no one will be able to use the rules against them. It’s a handy little arrangement the bureaucrats, lefty politicians, and the MFM have with each other.
Merovign on October 22, 2010 at 7:10 PM