(from CNN) Why disenfranchise these people?
How the military vote works
Oftentimes, service members spend time and money clearing hurdles that their civilian counterparts are usually spared in order to ensure their ballot is counted.
"Military voters have to work extra hard to vote," said Sarah Streyder, the founder of Military Vote Coalition, a nonprofit endorsed by leading veteran and military organizations that works with service members and their spouses to ensure they can vote.
"It's a complicated registration and submission process. I know people who had to pay upwards of $50 just to overnight a provisional ballot because their official ballots never got to them in time."
Streyder ticked off multiple examples: a military spouse who lives in Texas, where her husband is stationed, but votes in her home state of Pennsylvania; spouses who live in Japan but vote in Oklahoma, Texas, Florida and Georgia.
"It's demoralizing," she said of the President's attack on legal ballots that arrive after Election Day.
Military families typically move to new duty stations every few years, including overseas. Since 9/11, service members have been more likely to deploy, often repeatedly, and they have cast ballots by the millions from war zones, overseas postings and states where they temporarily reside.
In Georgia, service members who are serving away from home, both inside the US and overseas, have until close of business Friday for their ballots to be received, as long as they were postmarked on or before Election Day.
In Nevada, ballots postmarked by Election Day can be received as late as November 10.
Some states enforce deadlines for receiving the ballots but don't require a postmark, due to the differences in how mail is processed domestically and overseas, especially on military installations or in combat zones.
Pennsylvania and North Carolina are two examples.
In Pennsylvania, these absentee ballots must be signed by the night before the election and received by November 10. A postmark is not required. In North Carolina, home to some of the most frequently deployed Army forces in the nation, that deadline is even later: November 12 with no postmark required.
As the Federal Voting Assistance Program, a voter assistance and education program created by the Department of Defense explains, "Due to varying mail pick up times, the day you 'mail' your election mail may not be the day the postal facility postmarks it. You may ask the mail clerk to hand stamp the election material so that a date is clearly visible. In certain situations a handwritten postmark and signature from you or a notarizing official may be sufficient."
