Thousands of Maryland service members deployed overseas are seeking to vote in the November election that could determine their future in the combat zones.
“We’ve been non-partisan, obviously, but we want all of our service members to exercise their right to vote,” said Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Defense Department has ramped up its outreach by promoting voting on public service announcements on military television networks and publications, he said.
Each military company has its own voting officer whose job is to help service members register and vote.
The Maryland Board of Elections has received 3,344 requests for absentee ballots from Maryland service members abroad. They have until Oct. 14 to request an absentee ballot.
Those ballots also include the state’s referendum questions, one of which will determine if slot machines become legal in Maryland.
The Defense Department is anticipating an increase from the 2004 elections, when 73 percent of the military members abroad voted.
The country’s military future has been a major talking point among presidential candidates Sens. Barrack Obama and John McCain, who have differed on how long U.S. military forces should remain in Iraq.
Those service members with Internet connections can visit not only their individual state election Web sites — Maryland provides information for overseas service members on its site — but also on the Federal Voting Assistance Program Web site.
The hardest task is to make sure those in far-flung outposts have their say.
“In Afghanistan, you can be in some pretty remote places,” Melnyk said. “That’s why we’ve been pushing this for a couple of months. Out there, you’ll never know when you’ll get a chance to mail things away.”
The state elections board started distributing absentee ballots to local election boards this past week, and officials plan to push as many ballots as quickly as it can to overseas voters, officials said.
“We want to get them out quicker,” said Nikki Trella, the board’s director of elections reform.
“We are aware that in places like Afghanistan, it might take a month for the mail to get back here to Maryland.”
That is why the state will accept overseas ballots until Nov. 14, though the ballot itself must be postmarked before Nov. 4.
The Defense Department also is handing out federal write-in ballots in lieu of ballots from state boards. Trella said those ballots also could be used for the referendum questions and local elections.
On the homefront, more than 120 people registered to vote during a one-week registration drive in front of Fort Meade’s post exchange, said Anthony Barber, the fort’s voting officer.
The fort also saw a well-attended registration drive during summer events, and Barber said his goal is to have the entire post registered to vote through outreach programs.
“We’ve been getting a lot of phone calls, and not just from soldiers,” Barber said. “There are family members asking questions about how they can vote in Maryland.”
