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Voting all over the world

How one Web site could make overseas voting easier during this election.

Federal News Network Staff

September 17, 2008 4:26 pm

3 min read

By Dorothy Ramienski
Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio

A new Web site is making it easier for Americans overseas to vote.

It’s not online voting, but it gives members of the military and civilians quicker access to the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot.

On Wednesday’s Daily Debrief, hosts Christopher Dorobek and Amy Morris spoke with Michael Caudell-Feagan, Director of Make Voting Work, a project of the Pew Center on the States, who explains the main problem involves transit time with regards to their ballots.

Getting a ballot mailed to them from their local election official to wherever they are around the globe and then getting it back. Now, often when they’ve requested an absentee ballot, they simply don’t receive it, but federal law gives them an option — and that’s called the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot.

Caudell-Feagan says a new Web application was launched on Tuesday that lets those overseas fill out their absentee ballots, print them out and gain access to information about how to contact their local election official.

He likens the process to TurboTax, a program that allows citizens to fill out their tax forms online.

It, in essence, cuts the transit time in half. This ballot still returns by mail but, it’s available to you whenever you need it.

Make Voting Work is a two-year-old project sponsored by the Pew Center on the States. In the beginning, Caudell-Feagan says, his group reached out to state and county elections officials, requesting information about how the voting process could improve.

Three [officials] came back to us and said, “we are having a very difficult time helping our service members overseas and the civilians overseas cast their ballots.

Thus, overseasvotefoundation.org was born to prevent the problems of the past from happening again.

In 2006, a million ballots were mailed overseas. Less than a third we returned in time to be counted. We can attribute that to the reliance on the mail system. We can attribute that to the problem with state laws, which create hurdles that are unnecessary. In some states you have to have a notary sign your ballot. In other states, you can get your ballot by e-mail, but in the state right next door, you can only get it by mail. So there are a lot of impediments put into place and election officials need to — and many are striving — to make a system that really works.

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This is why Caudell-Feagan says he and others in his group think a uniform law would be prudent.

So, if you’re sitting [in] a mess hall in Iraq or you’re in a corporate cafeteria in Singapore, you’re going to have as likely a chance of getting your vote cast and counted no matter what state you’re from. Right now, that’s simply not the case, but this online application and the ability under federal law to use this federal write-in absentee ballot gives you an emergency procedure. If you request a regular absentee-ballot from the state, but you haven’t received it, you can turn to the federal write-in absentee ballot, you can turn to overseasvotefoundation.org and use this as a way to make sure that, at least for federal races — for president, for Senate, for Congress, you can get your vote counted this election cycle.

Caudell-Feagan says there are currently about 6,000,000 military and civilian U.S. Citizens living overseas.

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On the Web:

Overseas Vote Foundation – Home page