In October 2000, while stationed in San Diego, my home state absentee ballot arrived from North Carolina a few weeks before the presidential election. However, for my vote to count, I had to find two witnesses to watch me complete the ballot and sign their names to verify it. Uninterested in bringing politics into my unit, I waited. Days later, terrorists attacked the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. The week of the election, my ship deployed to the Persian Gulf. By Thanksgiving, with the election results still trapped in a Florida recount, we were steaming toward conflict without knowing whose orders we’d follow once there — and my only voice in the matter was an empty ballot left in my car’s glove compartment, stateside.

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