Military to push ballots through mail system more quickly

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Military to push ballots through mail system more quickly
By Geoff Ziezulewicz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, July 27, 2008


The Military Postal Service Agency is preparing measures for this election season that officials say will help absentee ballots move through the military mail system.

From Sept. 1 to Nov. 25, the military mail will prioritize absentee ballots, which will be specially marked and tagged, and personnel will be instructed to deal with those parcels first.

Postal personnel involved will be briefed and trained soon, according to Faye Johnson, MPSA chief of operations. They will be instructed that "whenever they see trays, tubs or anything with absentee ballots, that is to be expedited."

Mail room personnel also will be told that if they don’t have enough transportation for all the mail on a given day, ballot bags or bins will go first, she said.

Also, the U.S. Postal Service receives special funds every election year to send absentee ballots by Express Mail during the last week of the election, she said. That will start on Oct. 29 and should cut off about two days’ worth of transportation time.

It is not known how many overseas voters are able to cast absentee ballots successfully. Approximately 119,000 overseas military personnel requested absentee ballots for the 2006 election, but only about 57 percent of those were successfully cast and counted. About 900,000 ballots were requested in 2006 out of the estimated 6 million overseas military and civilian Americans.

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http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56387

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1. You mean this...

Military to push "McCain" ballots through mail system more quickly