This page contains bills sponsored by incumbent Senators who are running for re-election in 2008, plus House incumbents running for Senate in 2008. Bill sponsorships indicate the topics that legislators are most interested in, and spend the most time on. These bills are selected as the "signature issue" that each legislator focused on.

08-S3073 on May 22, 2008

1. In the defense of freedom, members of the United States Armed Forces are routinely deployed to overseas locations.
2. We live in what senior Army leaders have referred to as an 'era of persistent conflict'.
3. The right to vote is one of the most basic and fundamental rights enjoyed by Americans, and one which the members of the Armed Forces bravely defend.
4. The ability of the members of the Armed Forces to vote while serving overseas has been hampered by numerous factors, including inadequate processes for ensuring their timely receipt of absentee ballots, delivery methods that are typically slow and antiquated, and a myriad of absentee voting procedures that are often confusing.
5. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which requires the States to allow absentee voting for members of the Armed Forces and other specified groups of United States citizens, was intended to protect the voting rights of members of the Armed Forces.
6. 992,034 absentee ballots were requested in the 2006 general election. However, less than one-third of such ballots were ultimately received by local election officials, evidencing an unacceptable failure of the current absentee ballot system.
7. Modern technology continues to rapidly advance, greatly expanding the range of potential solutions to these problems and increasing the ability to remove obstacles encountered by overseas members of the Armed Forces in the past in trying to cast their votes; [specifically]:

• Collection- establish procedures for collecting absentee ballots
• Ensuring Delivery Prior to Closing of Polls- ensure that any absentee ballot which is collected prior to the applicable deadline is delivered prior to the time established by the State for the closing of the polls on the date of the election.

• Topic: Government Reform
• Headline: Ensure delivery of absentee ballots for troops overseas
• Headline 2: Ensure delivery of absentee ballots for troops overseas
• Key for participation codes:
• Sponsorships: p=sponsored; o=co-sponsored; s=signed
• Memberships: c=chair; m=member; e=endorsed; f=profiled; s=scored
• Resolutions: i=introduced; w=wrote; a=adopted
• Cases: w=wrote; j=joined; d=dissented; c=concurred