Another Rhetorical Question

While John Kerry is whining about voters being "tricked" into thinking that they should vote on the wrong day, here is a REAL story of disenfranchisement that you would think the former Vietnam veteran (did he mention he was a Vietnam veteran?) would champion (hat tip: Jim O):

The votes of at least 1 in 4 U.S. soldiers and overseas voters in last fall's election never were counted.

That's the conclusion of a recent report by the National Defense Committee, a private, pro-military organization that surveyed local election offices across the country about the number of absentee votes cast and counted in the Nov. 3 election.

In all, more than 30,000 of the 131,000 absentee ballots sent by troops and expatriates to 760 local elections offices around the country were not counted, the report found. Those offices represent about 10 percent of the 7,800 offices nationwide.

This disenfranchisement rate was a bit better than that of the 2000 presidential election, where widespread voting and mail glitches left about 29 percent of the ballots uncounted.

Even so, the organization said its study likely suffered from an undercount of its own that could make the number of troops left voteless last year even larger.

"The disenfranchisement rate we show is bad enough, but we think that our report probably understates the problem because we are relying on voluntary responses from election officials," the report said.

If Democrats are so interested in making sure "every vote counts" you would think that this would be an important issue for them.... I wonder why they don't appear to be interested?