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Ask Rokey Suleman to count the votes of American soldiers

And follow the recommendation of the Virginia Board of Elections

By: Soren Dayton (Diary)  |  October 26th, 2008 at 06:46 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Meet Fairfax Co. Registrar Rokey Suleman. He has decided to reject absentee ballots from American soldiers stationed overseas. In fact, some of the ballots he’s not counting are those from military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Suleman is using a technicality to throw out hundreds of our brave soldier’s votes. Except that Marc Ambinder reports that the Suleman is getting the technicalities wrong.

Voter disenfranchisement in any form is wrong, but the fact that some are actively seeking to take away the right to vote from the very people that are fighting to defend this fundamental American principal is deplorable.

Furthermore, Suleman is a partisan. He was the founder of the Trumbull, OH Young Democrats. Earlier this year, he ran, and lost, for the Ohio Democratic State Central Committee.

Watch him explain himself:

His response- “It stinks, but it’s the law.” A more accurate response is- “It is voter disenfranchisement, and that stinks”

Tell Rokey Suleman to honor our American soldiers and count their votes.

Rokey Suleman

Fairfax County General Registrar

703-222-0776

Rokey.Suleman@fairfaxcounty.gov

And join a Facebook group to send him a message.

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COMMENTS

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  • TexasAMC

    Why are you wasting an e-mail blast on this when the problem is already (apparently) solved?

    Seriously, this is part of the reason why the left blogs clobber the right blogs in generating action for breaking events – timeliness.

    • ocleverone

      As of 33 minutes ago, there will still be disenfranchised voters in Fairfax County.

      It needs to be on everyone’s radar screen.

      Suleman?s prior position had been that all of the federal ballots would be rejected unless the witness address was included. Now he says if a soldier first applied for a state ballot, did not receive the state ballot, then used the federal write-in ballot as a stop-gap, he will count the vote with or without the witness address. If the soldier used this federal write-in ballot as his sole means for voting, Suleman will not count the ballot if there is no witness address.

      It has yet to be determined how many soldiers this narrow Fairfax County decision will disenfranchise. The rest of the Virginia counties have accepted responsibility for not providing proper instructions to the soldiers and will be counting all of these ballots.

      Full Article at Human Events

      It’s not over yet and it needs to be pounded and pounded. Even one vote disenfranchised is one too many.

  • DrShady

    the Ambinder link leads to a story that says this seems to be resolved…

  • Jack_Savage

    He runs for the OHIO Democratic State Central Committee, then all of a sudden he pops up as the registrar in Fairfax County?

    Looks like another piece of excrement washes up on the shores of the Commonwealth. Just like all the losers from out of state in NoVa – a VINO – Virginian In Name Only. God how I despise them.

  • db1488

    I sent this.

    “Disenfranchisement stinks. Partisans who disenfranchise the people who bleed to keep them free are nothing. Nothing you will ever accomplish will outweigh the outrage you commit today. You should take a ride to Arlington and explain yourself to those who’ve already paid for you to treat them this way.”

    I took a lot out.

    I hope whatever reward he gets from the Democrats is worth what he’s paying out.

    Man, I hate this…

  • Hestrold

    Sorry Democrats bend over backwards to count questionable votes only. Didn’t you learn anything from Florida 2000?

  • ocleverone

    They are dogging this very closely. Delegate Mark Cole sent me an email saying that they were waiting for an opinion from the Attorney General.

    There are lots a great people fighting this, I think it will be solved very soon.

  • rmj

    the registrar is an employee. He or she works for the County and is hired/fired by the local Electoral Board.

    Unless I am way mistaken, decisions on what ballots to accept or reject are made by the Electoral Board not the Registrar.

    Now if these are applications for absentee ballots that might be a slightly different issue.

    (by the by, in Virginia, each Electoral Board is made up of 3 people, 2 from the Governor’s Party and 1 from the “out” party, so currently there are 2 Dems and 1 Rep on each Board)

  • Lord_Vegas

    Virginia Military Votes Will Be Counted

    The votes WILL be counted

  • ocleverone

    .

  • MsUnderestimated

    Hi, all:

    I wrote this idiot and I actually got a response from him (pretty ugly, though). Can Erick or anyone else here debunk his numbmers he lists in his response below?

    I am taking a moment to answer your e-mail out of the hundreds of e-mails that I have received.

    I did not choose to do this. This was a decision made by the Virginia legislature, passed down by the State Board of Elections and when I asked my county board if we could ignore this requirement they voted 3-0 to uphold the law.

    We have received over 75,000 absentee applications from military and civilians. This affected 63 ballots of those 75,000 and of those 63 only 6-7 were military. The rest were ordinary folks like you or me living overseas. I was not disenfranchising the military.

    But, why let the truth get in the way of a good story. It is unfortunate that people are using good folks like yourself to hype an agenda with things that are so far from the truth. People decided they could use a very small issue for partisan political game and chose to demonize me instead of working with me. I pointed this issue out to military voting rights groups in September. I alerted them to the problem and said we needed to fix it.

    I have received threats, my staff has been abused verbally and my friends across the nation have been contacted regarding this. All because the truth does not matter. Again, I was not disenfranchising the military. I understand how hard it is for the military to vote. The first ballot I ever cast was an absentee ballot in boot camp.

    I hope that a small portion of the truth sets your mind at ease,

    Best,
    Rokey Suleman

    Obnoxious little preening punk he is!

    Ms.U