Nobody can argue with that.

Yet only 30 percent of overseas military ballots were tallied in the last federal election two years ago, according to the government's Election Assistance Commission and the Pew Center on the States.

That is shameful.

A solution is needed to give soldiers the confidence that they can have their say — along with the rest of us — in electing a president and Congress.

Citing anecdotal evidence, the Associated Press last week reported that many ballots from soldiers overseas in 2006 arrived late. The mail-in process can take up to two months — yet some absentee ballots aren't available on military bases until a few weeks or days before the election.

Other military ballots in 2006 were filled out incorrectly or sent to the wrong locations and discarded, according to the AP.

And some soldiers, for reasons that aren't clear, failed to return ballots even though they went out of their way to request them. Perhaps they forgot. But a more likely explanation is that they didn't return their ballots because they knew it was already too late for them to count. Heavy combat also could make returning ballots impossible for some.

Given the unpredictable nature of serving in a war zone, no system will ever work perfectly. But the current system appears to be working less than a third of the time.

Bob Carey, a 23-year Navy reservist who served in the first Iraq war, says little has changed over the last half century to improve voting access for troops abroad. He favors Internet voting, given how wired military bases have become.

As a senior fellow at the National Defense Committee, a private advocacy group, Carey also told the AP he wants to standardize state and local laws governing voting by fax or e-mail.

The reliability and verification of e-mail voting in far-flung places present legitimate concerns. Yet somehow our nation needs to make sure a vote by a soldier in Iraq counts just as much as a vote by a civilian in Prairie du Sac.

Unfortunately, it's too late to fix the absentee voting system for soldiers in time for this fall's presidential election. But fixing this chronic and offensive lapse in representative democracy deserves prompt attention and a workable solution early next year.