Free Republic

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Federal officials say that absentee ballots being sent to U.S. military serving in Afghanistan may have been burned in a plane crash. A top official in the Federal Voting Assistance Program this week notified election officials across the nation that a transport plane crashed at Shindad Air Base on Oct. 19.

Army Sgt. Joshua Payne might have voted in the 2004 election. But a deployment to Iraq got in the way. In the end, the 24-year-old 32nd Signal Battalion member said it just wasn’t worth it. “Between deployments and everything, it’s too hard,” the Darmstadt, Germany-based soldier said. “Mail was so slow out there, it was kind of pointless.” Anyone who has worn the uniform knows the difficulties of voting overseas. So the Defense Department’s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), which supervises voting for Americans overseas, shopped a program to stateside election authorities this year that would allow jurisdictions and voters...

The Defense Department is deep-sixing an Internet voting program over concerns about security, a Pentagon spokeswoman said today. The Federal Voting Assistance Program, which aids Americans serving overseas in the voting process, will not use the SERVE system in November. The acronym stands for Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment. "The department has decided not to use the SERVE program in the November elections because of our inability to ensure the legitimacy of the votes," the spokeswoman said. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz signed the memo on SERVE Jan. 30. The cancellation follows a report by four of the 10...