If any one particular group truly deserves the right to be heard at election time it's the men and women who are serving overseas in our armed forces.
Let's hope a legal prod contained in a recently signed U.S. Defense Department bill will push Minnesota to move up its primary to an earlier date to accommodate the military and other Americans who are living abroad. The logistics of getting absentee ballots to U.S. contractors, embassy personnel and particularly the military are extremely difficult. The new federal law requires ballots to be sent to certain voters 45 days before an election, which will force many states to reexamine the dates of their primaries.
A study by the Pew Center on the States found that in 2006 1 million overseas ballots were requested but only about one third of those were cast or counted. That's not satisfactory at all.
It's not as if our political campaigns aren't up and running early enough. The burden should be on the parties to rearrange their political calendar so that our military and other overseas voters can cast ballots that are counted.
Another reason the primary date should be moved up is that a primary contest might one day produce the razor-thin margin of victory that characterized the 2008 U.S. Senate race. Recounts and legal challenges take time and if they occur after a primary there is an inflexible general election deadline that is looming.
Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is in favor of moving Minnesota's Sept. 14, 2010 primary up by at least a month. If the logistics dictate that isn't enough time, we'd be in favor of moving it up even further. State lawmakers should do whatever it takes to make sure the ballots cast by our fighting men and women speak as loudly as their bullets.
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