The New York Times on Denying the Troops a Secret Ballot:
Members of the military will be allowed to vote this year by faxing or e-mailing their ballots – after waiving their right to a secret ballot.
Beyond this fundamentally undemocratic requirement, the Electronic Transmission Service, as it's known, has far too many problems to make it reliable, starting with the political partisanship of the contractor running it. The Defense Department is making matters worse by withholding basic information about the service, and should suspend it immediately.
The Defense Department is encouraging soldiers to use absentee ballots or fax votes directly to local officials, when possible. But it also provides an alternative: Omega Technologies, a private contractor, will accept soldiers' faxed and e-mailed ballots on a toll-free line, and then send them to the appropriate local elections office. Handling ballots is always sensitive, but especially so when, as in this program, they are not secret.
Granted, there are some serious problems with this proposal to allow military men and women to waive their right to a secret ballot by sending their vote through a private contractor. However, as a former Voting Assistance NCO for the USMC, I'm perplexed at exactly would SHOULD be done to help those in uniform particpate in the "democratic" process. In that role, I helped hundreds of Marines and Sailors register to vote and request absentee ballots and information on political candidates. Absentee ballots, while always an option for our men and women in uniform, have a somewhat unreliable track record. During my tenure, many of those who requested absentee ballots never received them – or received them after submissions deadlines had passed. Further, getting some County voting offices to comprehend the challenges that military men and women face when attempting to excercise their civil liberties via the democratic process was frustrating and often infuriating.
The system has long been broken and something must be done, but I'm not at all sure that this method is the best solution.