FederalDaily - July 28, 2006

Voting Assistance to Expand for Military

The Federal Voting Assistance Program office is working to make it easier for military service members and their families to vote in this fall’s 2006 mid-term elections, said Polli Brunelli, the program’s chief. Changes this year include a revised Federal Postcard Application form, and some states will be sending ballots to requesters via e-mail and fax. The U.S. Postal Service is working with Brunelli’s office to ensure expedited mail service for absentee ballots. Ballots should be available to service members in September or October, and they will be advised to mail their votes the week of Oct. 8 to 14. The program is comprehensive, covering military personnel, as well as Department of Defense (DoD) civilians and contractors. Service members and their families generally vote in higher proportions than the general population, Brunelli said. She emphasized these votes count—absentee ballots many elections in 2004. For more information, visit www.fvap.gov.

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Lawmakers Seek Crackdown on Racism in Military

Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., is one of a group of House members who say they’ve had enough of what they see as a deepening racism problem in the U.S. military. Davis, along with Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and more than 40 other House members, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this week, to urge him to adopt a zero tolerance policy toward racist activity in the services. The lawmakers cited a recent report by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that concluded that hate and extremist group activities, despite their illegality, “stretch across all branches of service. The report also said racists are “linking up across the branches once they're inside, and they are hard-core”—even painting their graffiti in Iraq. “We urge you to confront this problem head-on by showing no tolerance for ethnic hatred among our service personnel,” the congress members wrote Rumsfeld. For more on the report, go to www.splcenter.org.

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Senators Push For Extra Border Security Funds

Since President Bush appealed in May for additional help from National Guard units at the U.S.-Mexico border, more public attention has been focused on the complicated issue of America’s porous frontier with Mexico. The Homeland Security appropriations bill, passed earlier this month, asks for more than $14 billion to secure border defenses, requesting more than 2,000 added border patrol agents and 5,000 new detention beds. Now, Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., want the government to provide another $3.7 billion in emergency funds for border security. “This proposal recognizes the importance of border security as the first step in achieving comprehensive immigration reform,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Frist said July 26 he sees the additional funds as “an important element of a full immigration reform proposal.” For more, go to: http://kyl.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=25934.

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