SorenDayton.com

(Posted on behalf of some Virginia activists who appreciate that those who serve deserve the right to vote)

For all the attention paid to the recent voting in Iraq and Afghanistan, one would think that the process for getting absentee ballots to our own service men and women should be simple and straightforward. Unfortunately, it’s a rather convoluted process and easy to miss the deadlines – especially if you’re deployed in a war zone.

For service personnel who claim residence in Virginia and New Jersey, this is a pressing issue, as the deadlines for requesting ballots for the statewide elections this November are fast approaching. A couple of organizations in Virginia, the Dominion Leadership Trust and ProjectVirginia are working to publicize how service men and women can vote in these two states’ 2009 elections.

The important first step of this process is to alert military personnel that they are eligible to vote absentee and give them the information to navigate the process for requesting a ballot. While both of these organizations are supporting Republican candidates, the information they are providing is a non-partisan step-by-step guide to navigating the process. They are simply asking everyone who knows someone in the military or a military family to email them this information – a small request to support our men and women in uniform.  You can use the links below:

Virginia: http://www.ProjectVirginia.com/military-vote

New Jersey: http://www.ProjectVirginia.com/military-vote-nj

The voting difficulties faced by deployed military personnel are not new – and cut across federal, state and local elections. As Peter Roff of US News & World Report wrote in May 2009, the PEW Center on the States found that only 26 percent of the absentee ballots requested by military personnel were ever actually counted in 2006. The widespread difficulties with military absentee voting in 2008 led Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Mark Beigich (D-AK) to sponsor a bipartisan bill, the Military Voting Protection Act and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to sponsor the bill in the House, earlier this year. While this legislation is a worthwhile effort, it is aimed at 2010 – so the rest of us need to step up just a little in 2009 and help spread the word to the troops and their families today.

In March, I wrote about the GOP opportunities that follow from the conviction of South Philly machine Democratic State Senator Vincent Fumo. The recent news of Democratic corruption out of New Jersey (mayors, rabbis, and body-parts, oh my!) and the emerging consensus that this fundamentally damages Jon Corzine’s already difficult re-election, when combined with outrage at farcically light sentencing creates real opportunities for Republicans.

Let’s go over the facts and see how much this helps Pennsylvania Republicans in 2010.

1. Pat Meehan, one of the Republican candidates for Governor got the initial indictments against Fumo. Tom Corbett, the other one, has his own story to tell about indicting Fumo and his operation. If Chris Christie ends up winning in New Jersey, there will be a ready-made media narrative comparing New Jersey to Pennsylvania.

2. That narrative will be a little emphasized because southern New Jersey is almost entirely in the Philadelphia media market. It will be non-national political news relevant to both parts of the the Philly media market.

3. Corruption is the sort of thing that suppresses Democrat-leaning independent turnout in formerly Republican suburbs in Bucks and Montgomery countes, and, to a lesser extent, in Chester and Delaware counties. And the South Philly turnout operation that Fumo was so effective at selling is probably somewhat reduced in effectiveness. Democrats can’t win statewide without huge margins out of southeast Pennsylvania. You couldn’t build a better script for reducing those margins.

Grab the popcorn. This will be fun to watch.

(Cross-posted from The Next Right)