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Basic Combat trainees vote

Fort Sill Public Affairs

Oct. 5, 2020 | 1:15

Basic Combat trainees don’t have a lot of say in their training environment, but they do have a say in the 2020 Election. Every trainee was given the opportunity to exercise their right as an American citizen to vote.

The Army provides a voting assistance officer (VAO) who informs and facilitates voting for Soldiers. Most Soldiers are not stationed in their hometowns, so they have to request an absentee ballot.

“I make sure that everyone is aware of how to register to vote, how to request an absentee ballot, what to do if their absentee ballot doesn’t arrive on time, and what to do if they decide to vote later than the deadlines,” said 1st Lt. Lee Fisk, 1st Battalion, 31st Field Artillery VAO. “They’re brand new to the Army and a lot of them are concerned that they won’t be able to vote and a lot of them are excited to be afforded the opportunity.”

Basic training units are different from normal units in that the trainees are solely focused on transforming from civilian to Soldier. Most downtime includes sleeping, showering, and eating.

Trainees aren’t given time to sit at computers, search the Internet, watch the news, or explore social media. Fisk said this was a challenge because trainees need to look up information pertinent to their community.

“A lot of them have questions of who they can vote for in their district, especially for senator or house representative,” said Fisk.

To ensure information was available quickly, the trainees were afforded their cellphones.

“With their phones they can quickly look up an important issue to see where a candidate stands on that issue or house representative if there’s a vote for that,” said Fisk.

While most trainees did not have questions, Fisk said he did receive a few.

“I had one trainee ask about Kanye West because he remembered hearing that he was running. I was able to show them which states Kanye was on the ballot, which states he was a write-in-candidate on the ballot and some of them were just excited to be informed in this way.”

The role of the VAO isn’t to persuade or influence trainees one way or the other, but to give them the opportunity to vote.

“I actually went through Basic Training around the same time in 2016,” Fisk said as he can relate to the timing of being in BCT during an election. At 1-31st FA, Fisk went to each battery during their first couple weeks of training and gave each trainee a Federal Post Card Application. This allowed them to request an absentee ballot in their state.

“A lot of people want to express their voice and be represented in their government and this gives them that opportunity to be represented.”