Team,
I strongly believe that our military is one of the most powerful forces for good in the world. Our brave men and women fight everyday to defend our Constitution, our freedom and our country. I also believe that those of us in elected office have a duty to our soldiers and that duty is to ensure that those serving at home and abroad have every opportunity to vote in elections taking place here at home. Whether they are serving in the mountains of Afghanistan or in the deserts of Iraq - they are fighting for our freedom and we need to remove all obstacles that they face while trying to vote absentee.
During this past General Assembly Session, I was proud to introduce Senate Bill 55, which will ease the absentee voting process for our soldiers and allow for more of our soldiers votes to be counted. Governor McDonnell Signed this bill into law on April 29th.
Just yesterday, The Pew Center, released a statement commending our work on this legislation. Here's an excerpt from the article highlighting the main points of the bill:
"Delegate Richard Anderson (R-Woodbridge) and Senators Robert Hurt (R-Chatham) and Stephen Martin (R-Chesterfield) led efforts to draft and pass the bipartisan legislation.
The legislation(SB55) removes obstacles that military and overseas voters commonly encounter by:
- requiring ballots for all federal, state and local elections be transmitted at least 45 days prior to an election;
- mandating the electronic transmittal of blank ballots for all elections, upon request;
- expanding the acceptance of the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB) to all federal, state and local elections; and
- allowing ballots from military voters to be accepted and counted up until two business days prior to the certification of election results."
I was proud to work on passing this legislation. As your next Congressman, I will fight for common sense solutions to the serious issues facing our nation. Please click on the link below to read the entire article.
Sincerely,
Robert Hurt
PS: Read the full article at
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=58713