Feds Let Troops Fight, Won't Help Them Vote

The Pentagon has long dragged its heels on making it easier for US troops overseas to have their votes count back home, columnist Robert Novak points out in the Washington Post. There’s little appetite in a Democratic-controlled Congress to kick-start the process, Novak notes, as evidenced by the “silence” that met a recent Republican resolution aimed at goosing the Defense Department on the issue.

“The US military that has so perfected the art of war over the past half-century is at a loss to enable soldiers to vote,” Novak marvels. And Congress isn’t getting any help from President Bush: “In a lame-duck administration counting the days before a troubled 8 years finally end, American fighting men and women who are deprived of their right to vote constitute the least of the White House's worries.” (More absentee balloting stories.)