County canvassers in Florida have thrown out more than 1,500 overseas ballots, most of them because a postal clerk or machine did not stamp a date across the envelope. While it is unknown how many of the ballots are from military personnel, Republicans have accused Democrats of a coordinated effort to get the votes disqualified. Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, a Republican, criticized the vice president's lawyers and said that Bush's gains in absentee ballots would have been higher if the military votes had been counted. But there is some doubt among Pentagon officials as to whether the rejected ballots came from servicemembers. Glenn Flood, a Defense Department spokesman in Washington, said every piece of mail, whether it is on a ship or from an Army post in Bosnia, should be postmarked, and there have been no widespread reports of problems.
Some officials disagree.
From all accounts, many of these ballots are being challenged due to circumstances beyond the control of the individual military voter and may, in part, result from sloppy Defense Department procedures. Spence has also asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to conduct a review of the military absentee ballots that have been rejected by local election officials in Florida. A small number of military personnel said they never got ballots they requested, and others have had their ballots returned for a variety of reasons. A Naval officer on the USS George Washington said his vote did not count because his ballot envelope was not postmarked. Lawrence said MPS officials are trying to backtrack through the system to find out what happened with absentee ballots that were submitted through local military post offices overseas.