I wrote to Rokey yesterday and received the following reply:

I am taking a moment to answer your e-mail out of the hundreds of e-mails that I have received.

I did not choose to do this. This was a decision made by the Virginia legislature, passed down by the State Board of Elections and when I asked my county board if we could ignore this requirement they voted 3-0 to uphold the law.

We have received over 75,000 absentee applications from military and civilians. This affected 63 ballots of those 75,000 and of those 63 only 6-7 were military. The rest were ordinary folks like you or me living overseas. I was not disenfranchising the military.

But, why let the truth get in the way of a good story. It is unfortunate that people are using good folks like yourself to hype an agenda with things that are so far from the truth. People decided they could use a very small issue for partisan political game and chose to demonize me instead of working with me. I pointed this issue out to military voting rights groups in September. I alerted them to the problem and said we needed to fix it.

I have received threats, my staff has been abused verbally and my friends across the nation have been contacted regarding this. All because the truth does not matter. Again, I was not disenfranchising the military. I understand how hard it is for the military to vote. The first ballot I ever cast was an absentee ballot in boot camp.

I hope that a small portion of the truth sets your mind at ease,

Best,

Rokey Suleman

I responded saying that I understood the Board of Elections and the Attorney General had encouraged him to count the ballots. If this were not true, then I apologized for bothering him.

I also indicated that the failure to count one legitimate ballot was unacceptable. I also said that too many fraudulent votes were being counted.

I have not had a response to my response.

If what Rokey says above is correct, then I would think he would want the message shared.

I wrote a very polite and short letter, and got the same response.

I am taking a moment to answer your e-mail out of the hundreds of e-mails that I have received.
I did not choose to do this. This was a decision made by the Virginia legislature, passed down by the State Board of Elections and when I asked my county board if we could ignore this requirement they voted 3-0 to uphold the law.
We have received over 75,000 absentee applications from military and civilians. This affected 63 ballots of those 75,000 and of those 63 only 6-7 were military. The rest were ordinary folks like you or me living overseas. I was not disenfranchising the military.
But, why let the truth get in the way of a good story. It is unfortunate that people are using good folks like yourself to hype an agenda with things that are so far from the truth. People decided they could use a very small issue for partisan political game and chose to demonize me instead of working with me. I pointed this issue out to military voting rights groups in September. I alerted them to the problem and said we needed to fix it.
I have received threats, my staff has been abused verbally and my friends across the nation have been contacted regarding this. All because the truth does not matter. Again, I was not disenfranchising the military. I understand how hard it is for the military to vote. The first ballot I ever cast was an absentee ballot in boot camp.
I hope that a small portion of the truth sets your mind at ease,
Best,
Rokey Suleman

From: XXXXX
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 12:54 PM
To: Suleman, Rokey W.
Subject: Count the soldiers votes.. they’ve earned it more than anyone.

Please reconsider and do not throw away soldiers votes over a perceived technicality

to come in and Fight for fellow Brothers-In-Arms Rights!!!