From left: Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Wayne Thorley and Nevada Army National Guard Capt. Mark Goulart are seen Tuesday during a flag presentation.
Members of the 485th MP Company on Tuesday presented Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske with a special flag commemorating their deployment to the Middle East.
It was Cegavske who went to Fort Bliss, Texas to see them off before they left the country. She did so to make a presentation about the Effective Absentee System for Elections (EASE) — the online system that enables members of the military and other voters who are overseas to cast their ballots in Nevada’s elections.
Capt. Mark Goulart, commander of the unit, said the Nevada state flag encased in a wooden display case flew over Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain before they brought it back to Nevada.
“If you actually took the flag out, it’s pretty used,” he told Cegavske. “It was brand new when we got it.”
“The fact it was flown over all of these countries is incredible,” she said.
A total of 124 members of the unit were deployed in the Middle East. Goulart said the presentation on how to vote even though they were out of the country was valuable to the unit. He urged Cegavske to do something similar for other Nevada military units that deploy overseas.
She said she would like to see all of the units off as they leave.
“We’d like to do this for everybody who’s deployed,” she said.