Veterans have many reasons to be annoyed (!) with Donald Trump. Not all are, because not all veterans think alike (shock horror, we’re not a monolithic post-military mob.) But many are annoyed (or more) and we–my husband and myself–are in that group. We also have reasons to be annoyed with him beyond our status as veterans, but this particular rant has to do with his treatment of military personnel, military families, and veterans, from his verbal insults to Gold Star families from before he was even elected, to his disdainful, disrespectful comments about those wounded or killed in service, to his giving aid and comfort to Russia when he knew Russian was putting bounties on our troops to have them assassinated, to his current attempts to stop the absentee ballots of US troops deployed on the grounds that they’re fraudulent because “they don’t live in that state.”
When my husband was stationed in various states, and then deployed to Vietnam, he voted absentee…and he requested his absentee ballots from the state of Texas because that was his home of record. Military personnel have long been granted the right to vote, and to vote absentee, because they don’t know where they’ll be when voting time comes around. You can be stationed in one state, sent off on a TDY (temporary duty assignment) to another state, or another location in the same state, or overseas, whenever the needs of the service require. That’s why your home of record…where you register to vote in a particular county…is your legal residence while you’re on active duty. Especially if you’re early in your career, it’s likely your home town, where you came from, because you’re sure not buying a house in, say, Alexandria, VA on a private’s or 2nd lieutenant’s pay. My home of record was my mother’s house, 1800 miles from my duty station. His home of record was his mother’s address.
Trump’s suit alleges that military personnel are casting fraudulent ballots if they aren’t resident in the state from which they received an absentee ballot. This is just another attempt to deny US citizens the right to vote…and a flaming insult to US military personnel. Not the first, or the second, or the tenth or the twentieth. Cadet Bonespurs hasn’t learned a thing about his responsibilities to the troops he’s CINC of.
And troops were furloughed in the Civil War so they could vote. For many years soldiers were denied the right to vote because mailed ballots were not allowed – you had to come in person. Sauron and his republican sycophants DO NOT CARE about anyone or anything except themselves..
Sorry for the rant. I will be going to the supermarket to get my poppy this morning.
Jonathan up here in New Hampshire.
I served in the Navy – not very well, but I always felt it was one the many civic obligations.
Rant on, you are exactly right!
Jonathan, it’s darn near impossible to find poppies here. I remember them as a child, but now…I’m glad you can find one.
Lots of us served less well than we wished, because we had high expectations of ourselves and found we were fallible humans after all.
Fallible humans or not, thank you all so much for your service!