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Ensuring the Right of Our
Military Personnel to Vote
Op-ed by
Pennsylvania State Senator John Pippy
With the 2004 presidential
election upon us, a lot has been said and written about ensuring the voting
rights of our military personnel serving overseas.
Many officials across
Pennsylvania believe that we have an obligation to provide an extension of time
so that military votes can be counted. In my view, we should do precisely that
-- because there is no more significant way for us to let our dedicated military
know how much we respect them and how profoundly we appreciate the job they’re
doing to ensure our safety here at home.
As a veteran of Operation Iraqi
Freedom, it is my privilege to call the men and women stationed in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and other overseas locations my colleagues in the United States
armed services. I’m fortunate to be back in Pennsylvania for this election, but
thousands of others remain abroad.
Over the course of the many
months I served in the Middle East, it became very clear to me how seriously
military personnel take their right to vote. They should be given every
opportunity to exercise that right.
Governor Rendell has repeatedly
rejected calls to support such an extension. In doing so, he has relied on
legal technicalities as supposed evidence that such an extension is not
necessary. The many calls and emails my office has received from families of
military men and women deployed abroad has made it very clear that many have not
received their ballot in a timely manner and these “legal technicalities” will
deny the voice of the men and women who are defending freedom and sacrificing so
much. A two-week extension represents the least we can do for those who have
done so much.
The bottom line is, or at least
should be, this: The men and women of the U.S. military deserve to have their
votes counted.
Our duty to serve these valiant
members of the military, who serve us daily in harm’s way, demands nothing less.
While the Rendell
administration has yet to support the effort to ensure that our military
personnel can exercise their right to vote, they have implemented an
unprecedented program to educate convicted felons of their voting rights. On
September 14, the Department of State and the Department of Corrections found
the time to send a document entitled, “Voting Rights of Convicted Felons,
Convicted Misdemeanants and Pretrial Detainees” to prison wardens and election
officials across the state.
My point is not that any
qualified citizen should be denied the right to vote -- on the contrary, I serve
in the military to help protect that very right.
This is not a time to be
divided, nor is it an issue which should divide us. This is not a time for
trivial excuses, nor for frivolous rhetoric.
Governor Rendell, please join
with us now.
Let’s work together so that all
of our military personnel can have their votes counted.
NOTE:
The writer, Senator John Pippy (R-Allegheny), served in Iraq and Kuwait as part
of Operation Iraqi Freedom from April 2003 to December 2003.
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