military being overtly pushy about how to vote? little story

[freeplessinseattle]

yesterday one of the people I was canvassing with said she has a friend at Fort Knox military base who was "sat down, her absentee ballot placed in front of her, and pretty much told that she was voting for *, while they watched." they didn't exactly hold a gun to her head (tho thatw ouldn't surprise me) but made clear that's what she should do in order to properly serve her country, etc.. I asked her for more details, did they call everyone in to do this same thing, etc. but the friend didn't know. I have her phoen number so I will call her in a few hours to get more details and see if we can find out if this was common there, and how we can go about elicting the truth from the troops. don't know much difference this would make on this eelection, if any, but the dirty work needs to be exposed.

[mark11727]

1. You mean they were ORDERED to vote for *....!?!?!

[freeplessinseattle]

2. that's pretty much what it sounded like, but I need to get more details

I guess she was sat down, her absentee ballot placed on the table in front of her, and was to;ld something along the lines of 'you know * is the wise choice, a good soldier would vote*" not exactly told "Vote * or else" but definitely intimidation and abuse of authority. this was in WA so wouldn't make a diff in the vote, but if it happened here why not elsewhere?? I mean, it's implicit that the military traditionally support rethugs, but to overtly campaign, more than campaign, strongly encourage at the moment the ballot is filled out, maybe with some implicit threat and implication of disloyalty. what happened to anonymous voting??

[punpirate]

3. This has happened for a long time...

... in the military. I got a similar lecture (although it was more carefully worded) in the 1968 election. One could clearly infer from the little speech I got was that Nixon, though not named, was the preferred choice, because he would support the military in a way that Hubert Humphrey would not.