[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 149 (Thursday, September 18, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Page S8985]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     MILITARY VOTING PROTECTION ACT

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as the Senate knows, yesterday we voted to 
pass the Defense authorization bill. However, one of the casualties of 
yesterday's process--which was unique, to my knowledge; we actually had 
only two rollcall votes on amendments to the Defense authorization 
bill, which I don't think has ever happened before, and many important 
amendments were blocked by the process, amendments that might have been 
included in the managers' package. I wish to mention just one of those, 
which is the Military Voting Protection Act.
  This was originally offered as a freestanding bill earlier, but then 
it changed to become an amendment to the Defense authorization bill 
because we thought it was particularly appropriate, as we were dealing 
with the needs of the men and women in uniform around the world, that 
we also respect and enforce their right to cast a vote.
  We know from 2006 statistics alone that of all of the eligible 
civilian and military voters around the world who were eligible and who 
actually requested an absentee by mail ballot, only 5.5 percent of 
those votes were actually counted. That is a disgraceful statistic and 
one we need to do something about.
  I compliment Senator Levin, Senator Feinstein, and others for working 
with us during the process of the Defense authorization bill to come 
together on what I believe was a clear and acceptable amendment to all 
sides, but because of the bizarre process we found ourselves in 
yesterday, this bill was basically a casualty of that process, as I 
say.
  So what I am hoping to do is take a bill we worked on that is very 
important in order to protect one of the most important civil rights of 
our men and women in uniform--the right to vote--and hopefully, by 
unanimous consent today, we can pass this bill and get it on its way to 
the President for signature in due course. I don't see any reason, 
since we did work together on this on a bipartisan basis and it has 
been cleared by both sides, there would be any objection.

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