American military members stationed overseas may find that their votes are not counted, again.

Nearly 500,000 Americans are abroad, defending our freedom as members of our armed forces. In standing their post and protecting the rest of us back home, they make enormous sacrifices. They live in tiny compartments aboard submarines and in tents on the gritty desert. They spend months, even years, away from their families. Some give up their lives in service of their nation.

Usually, the process works something like this: A soldier abroad fills out an application for an absentee ballot and sends it to his local election official. The official processes the application and mails a ballot to the soldier a few weeks before the election. Once he receives it, the soldier must fill out his ballot and return it to the election official. Usually, it must arrive by Election Day. In some states, it may arrive up to two weeks later as long as it was postmarked or signed prior to Election Day. A few states even require that absentee voters have the signature on their ballot notarized — a difficult task when voting from a temporary camp in Iraq.

Needless to say, problems abound. The most critical of these is the shameful condition of the military postal system. Mail from the United States to overseas military posts usually takes about three weeks. Aside from being a disgraceful disservice to the troops, the lengthy delivery period for international military mail poses major problems for soldiers trying to vote because some states do not even distribute ballots until 30 days before Election Day. This makes it virtually impossible for the overseas military voter to fill out the ballot and have it back to the proper election authority on time.

This is an unbelievable failure in our election system, not that it is not a complete mess no matter how you look at it.

But the very least you should be able to provide for our military members is the opportunity to participate in the election process. I mean the next Presidential election probably effects them more then just about anybody else and they have every right to have their vote counted.

My belief is that in this 2008 election cycle we will see the military vote show a distinct preference for the Democrat presidential candidate for the first time in many years.

Which of course means that the current administration and Pentagon will probably not rush to fix this problem anytime soon.