Proposed bill would make voting easier for overseas military

Minnesota Congressman Erik Paulsen said he's marking the Memorial Day holiday by sponsoring a new measure to make it easier for military members serving overseas to vote.

Paulsen said the so-called "Military Voter Protection Act" would use the U.S. Postal Service's express mail service to cut the mailing time for overseas military voters to as little as four days.

"One of the provisions of the bill will require that ballot shipments will be trackable so that a service member can monitor his or her ballot as it makes its way to the local board of elections," Paulsen said. "So again, we're just essentially using current technology to assure that our veterans are having their votes delivered on time."

The third district Republican said as many as 23 percent of rejected absentee ballots are from military voters, whose ballots arrived too late to be counted.

Rejected absentee ballots played a key role in Minnesota's still-unresolved U.S. Senate race.

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