The Global Battleground

The last time Chris Shannon voted for a President, it was for a Republican, Ronald Reagan, and the year was 1980. This time, the 42-year-old former U.S. special-forces soldier, who has lived in Japan for the past seven years, will be casting his ballot for Democrat John Kerry. Shannon is eager to vote because he thinks President George W. Bush has mishandled the Iraq war. But Shannon is doing much more than exercising his own civil rights: he's also helped register some 200 other Tokyo-based Americans and is leading a group of them to Florida, the state that narrowly gave Bush...