If the Department of Defense can get tanks, high tech equipment, and food to the front lines of combat we can figure out a way to deliver an election ballot as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Voter Registration System Needs to Be Modernized

Saxby Chambliss, an original co-sponsor of this bill, member of the Armed Services Committee who has shared our commitment to ensuring that Americans serve overseas can participate fully in the electoral process.

We have had some serious circulation problems.

It does not sound radical to me, but maybe the Inspector General was exaggerating or using too strong language.

I am grateful to you, Senator Schumer, the Rules Committee members and staff for allowing me to participate in this much needed effort for legislative action.

If voting is the heart of democracy, registering Americans is the lifeblood of our Republic.

If we had one change to make this better, what would it be?

Thank you again, Ms. McGinn, for your excellent testimony.

S.1415 will amend the 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee voting Act and bring it into the 21st Century.

I agree with you, having a bipartisan vote on anything is important.

But the instance of, say, the military soldier who was assigned, wants to vote, and did not.

But just to quibble with my good friend, in the first half of the 19th century, nobody voted in Utah.

I hope it will pass out of this committee without opposition.

Based on the results of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which Senator Schumer discussed, I project that 9 million Americans did not vote because they had recently moved or because the date for registering to vote had already…

Do you think if we forced the states to change the way they set up absentee ballot procedures for federal elections, they would then match it for their local elections?

The question of last minute registration, the massive amount of data entries involved, are a lot to place on local county officials with limited resources.

One in four ballots requested by troops deployed overseas went uncounted in the 2008 election.

I would like to do it. You know me.

There may be a need to change some of those rules.

3.8 percent of all respondents showed up to the polls and found they had problems with voter registration.

The astounding fact here was the reports... that large numbers of people just could not vote.

We could always say, well, they should have registered. That is probably what Mr. Nelson would say, right?

I want to thank the six witnesses. I thought the testimony was excellent.