Cohen seeks absentee vote review

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered an internal review Tuesday of the way the military handles absentee ballots from troops stationed abroad in light of the political dispute over disqualified votes in Florida.

Cohen instructed Acting Inspector General Donald Mancuso to examine whether standard practices were followed in handling absentee ballots from overseas military personnel and whether handling procedures could be improved.

“The last thing we want to do is to make it harder for those who are wearing the uniform of the United States of America and serving overseas to cast a ballot,” Cohen wrote in a memo to Mancuso.

Several hundred absentee ballots from overseas were rejected in Florida for lack of postmarks, as required by state law, or other flaws such as no signatures or signatures that did not match those on record. Bowing to Republican pressure, public unease and lawsuits, elections officials in several counties reversed earlier decisions to reject overseas ballots that had missing, improper or postelection postmarks.

The Pentagon has no hand in voting by members of the military, other than in postmarking and delivering their mail, but it advises service members who wish to vote by absentee ballot to allow enough time to receive ballots from their states of residence.

Kenneth Bacon, spokesman for Cohen, said among the issues the Pentagon inspector general will examine is why some absentee ballots from overseas arrived without postmarks, contrary to normal procedure.