Voting Drive

Photo By Vaughn Larson | Joint Task Force Guantanamo troopers cast their ballots in a voting drive, Oct. 21. The drive offered federal write-in ballots for troopers who hadn't received their absentee ballots. JTF Guantanamo conducts safe, humane, legal and transparent care and custody of detained enemy combatants, including those convicted by military commission and those ordered released. The JTF conducts intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination for the protection of detainees and personnel working in JTF Guantanamo facilities and in support of the Global War on Terror. JTF Guantanamo provides support to the Office of Military Commissions, to law enforcement and to war crimes investigations. The JTF conducts planning for and, on order, responds to Caribbean mass migration operations.  

11.07.2008

Story by Sgt. Gretel Weiskopf 

Joint Task Force Guantanamo Public Affairs

By Gretel Sharpee
Joint Task Force Guantanamo

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - If in the last few months you connected the line pointing to your party preference with a smudged pencil line, or you wrote in the name of your choice for the next president, you voted in the 2008 Presidential election.

According to media accounts, this election brought record numbers of voters to the polls. It seemed as though everyone wanted to be heard. For Joint Task Force Guantanamo troopers, it was no different.

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class James Richardson, JTF staff voting assistance officer, and his team deserve special accolades for assisting in registering more than 650 JTF troopers and civilians as absentee voters over the past 22 months.

Absentee voting for troopers and civilians stationed here is relatively easy, but requires some prior planning. Each unit or organization in JTF has a voting assistance officer to help with that very process and the staff judge advocate office is willing to help as well.

"One of the biggest issues I have encountered this year is that troopers at JTF did not request their absentee ballot by their state's deadline or update their absentee mailing address," said Richardson. "Upon each [permanent change of station], active duty personnel should submit an absentee ballot request to their local election official."

A voting drive was held Oct. 21, to assist troopers who hadn't received their absentee ballots within two weeks of the election. Two weeks is the minimum amount of time it would take a ballot mailed from U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to reach a state voting agency.

The ballots available at the voting drive were federal write-in ballots so troopers needed to know which candidates they wanted to vote for before coming to the drive. They also needed to have state-issued identification, such as a state driver's license, and they needed to be registered to vote in that state as well.

Once filled out, the write-in ballots were then flown off island the next day and mailed in the states to ensure timely delivery.

"Two hundred and five voters cast their votes on the back-up federal write-in ballot at the voting drive [Oct. 21]," said Richardson.

In true democratic fashion, voters in the United States cast their ballots just like the troopers here. The Presidential race ended Nov. 4 with the election of Barack Obama as our next president.

• Date Taken: 11.07.2008
• Date Posted: 11.12.2008 11:58
• Story ID: 26244