At a recent rally to thwart Democrats' repeated attempts at blocking and stalling military absentee ballots, I had the honor of introducing Major General P.X. Kelley. General Kelley was the 28th Commandant of the Marine Corps and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 1983 and 1987. He was traveling the country with three Congressional Medal of Honor recipients as part of Armed Forces Voter Week - a cause to ensure that military votes are counted in 2004.

The timing of General Kelley's rally on September 9, 2004, was significant. The preceding evening, NBC's 60 Minutes allowed a Kerry-Edwards strategist to libel and slander President Bush's national guard service with military memoranda that mysteriously materialized right after polls showed Bush-Cheney with a double-digit lead in the presidential election.

By September 10th, the memos purportedly authored by the deceased Lt.Col. Jerry Killian were identified as forgeries by Killian's family and by independent document experts, who identified modern word processing characters in the memos. 60 Minutes stands by its story but has been unable to explain how Lt.Col. Killian could have used word processing software that did not exist when he supposedly wrote the memos in 1972 and 1973.

The third anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attack on America came only three days after 60 Minutes acted as a willing accomplice for desperate Democrat campaigners who would clearly stop at nothing to lie and cheat their way to the White House. At a time when the country was coming together again to mourn September 11, 2001, Democrats and their media allies were determined to divide America with lies about the president.

It is, of course, no surprise that Kerry-Edwards would resort to forgery to win the presidency. Recall that, in 2000, Democrat canvassing officials in Florida tried to disqualify over 1,400 military absentee ballots that were timely received but lacked postmarks. When veterans groups protested, Vice Presidential candidate, Joe Lieberman, was forced to acknowledge on NBC's Meet The Press that Florida officials should "give the benefit of the doubt to ballots coming in from military personnel."

Of the 1,400 votes that officials finally counted, 1,380 were for Bush-Cheney. Indeed, according to a recent American Legion poll, Bush-Cheney 2004 can depend on about 70% of active-duty service people's votes. Democrats will, therefore, stop at nothing again to keep those votes from being counted.

Compared to the 2000 election, thousands more service people are deployed and in need of absentee ballots this year. About 250,000 service people requested ballots in 2000, while 340,000 requests have to be met this year. Bush-Cheney's Armed Forces Voter Week was designed to serve those requests and, above all, to make sure that all 340,000 ballots are counted.

The Democrats are already stonewalling the effort. Theresa Petrone, a Democrat election commissioner in Chicago, advised the Associated Press that it would take "emergency legislation" for her board to count military ballots dated appropriately for November 2nd but received only days after the deadline.

It is an unfortunate thing that General Kelley has to stump for service people who, due to their deployment and service abroad, are absent from their regular polling places and must depend on election officials motivated to disregard military ballots. General Kelley, however, makes a compelling point: the oath he swore to protect and defend the Constitution has no end date, and his service to the military transcends his retirement from the Marine Corps. Election officials bent on disregarding military ballots are going to have to deal with General Kelley.

Election officials should also heed Senator Lieberman's "benefit of the doubt" rule when it comes to military ballots. If they do not, Democrats will continue to lose credibility with the electorate as a whole because it appears as though Democrat officials are willing to interfere again with service people's constitutional right to have their votes counted.

Rick Erickson