The Defense Department used to have a pretty effective system for getting absentee ballots to military personnel and the completed ones back to the States before Election Day.
As soon as Clinton got into office he made the Defense Department dismantle the absentee ballot system and banned the Defense Department from doing any activity that would help the military personnel vote.
It is terrible that the Bush Administration has not got the old absentee ballot system back in place.

“banned the Defense Department from doing any activity that would help the military personnel vote.”
Details?

See
http://www.sos.state.tx.us/about/newsreleases/2002/07032002.shtml

Thanks. The directive referred to in that press release was at least ostensibly issued to prevent intimidation that civilians might feel from having to go to a military installation to vote. It had nothing to do with absentee ballots for servicemen overseas, or even (directly) with military personnel voting, though obviously it is more convenient for military personnel to have a polling place be on the base.
Given your position concerning alleged black voter disenfranchisement, I hardly think you would be troubled by a directive that says little more than “soldiers on bases may have to walk as far as regular old civilians to get to a polling place”. Even so, any effect the directive might have had on the 2000 election was eliminated by the bill referred to in this Wall Street Journal editorial, and appears to have been permanently cured by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 on December 28, 2001.
So again I ask, in what way did Clinton, as you allege, “ban[] the Defense Department from doing any activity that would help the military personnel vote”?

or as dawn would say: ” in yo face” in other news, karol you also requested an absentee ballot that you didn’t receive, so no, the word seems to be incompetence at the ny board of elections.

But, Dawn, what percentage of the military who didn’t get their ballots requested it from the NY Board of Elections?

Sounds like it’s the militarys fault. And yes it is disengfranchisement.

How can that possibly be translated into the ‘military’s fault’?

well, if it’s not the NY Board of Elections’ fault, then it’s either the military’s fault or what? drawer gnomes?

Doofus, that’s the question.

Sorry didn’t read the article.
Military/DOD/state/local/postal service/election boards/ seems like there is enough fault to spread around.