Free Republic

Within the last hour, the first exit poll of 817 Americans in Israel, who attended U.S. election voting events in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening to vote by absentee ballot, has been released.

Organizations dedicated to helping overseas voters cast their ballot this year are reporting unprecedented rates of participation over the past few months as Election Day and absentee ballot deadlines near. The Defense Department’s Federal Voting Assistance Program, which assists all U.S. voters overseas, reported about 10.5 million visits to www.fvap.gov this year as of Oct. 19, up from 7.3 million visits for all of 2004. The site provides absentee voter information by state, and about 15,000 user accounts have been set up in which voters can fill out and generate state-specific absentee ballot request forms, according to Army Lt. Col....

Presidential Campaigns Join Overseas and Military Voter Outreach Effort Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) is fielding record levels of online activity from overseas and military voters and views this as a key indicator of potentially unprecedented high levels of voter participation of overseas and military voters in Election 2008. Over 2 million visitors have come to the OVF website, or an OVF hosted website in 2008. The month of September averaged 25,000 visits per day to the combined total of 17 OVF hosted websites. Of the tens of thousands of voters that OVF has helped to register, 26% are first-time voters,...

I work in an office in Melbourne, Australia. A coworker is playing the radio and every hour on the news they have another hit piece on McCain-Palin and another sound byte from Obama. The only thing keeping me sane is a parody of a commercial running through my head...

If you want a sense of how elderly Jewish Americans are likely to vote this November, speak to the residents of Jerusalem's Ramat Tamir retirement community. Nestled in the city's northern hills is a collection of Jewish seniors in neat, well-maintained apartments, where most of the ambient conversational buzz is in English and American-accented Hebrew. Its American residents are people who seemingly could just as easily have retired to Florida. One of the residents, 105-year-old Miriam Pollak, is believed to be the oldest American voter living abroad. With five generations of descendants, she "stopped counting" how many great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren...

Democrats abroad give Obama 11th straight winPosted: 22 February 2008 0321 hrs WASHINGTON - White House hopeful Barack Obama has won his party's primary for Democrats living outside the United States, the Democrats Abroad organization said Thursday. Obama won 65.6 percent of the vote taken between February 5-12 in 164 countries and territories around the world, including Antarctica, compared to 32.7 percent for his rival Hillary Clinton. The global primary gives Obama his 11th victory over Clinton, although only seven delegates were at stake. Obama has won 2.5 international delegates so far with two going to the former first lady,...

MEXICO CITY — This year, for the first time, expatriate Democrats can cast their ballots on the Internet in a presidential primary for people living outside the United States. Democrats Abroad, an official branch of the party representing overseas voters, will hold its first global presidential preference primary from Feb. 5 to 12, with ex-pats selecting the candidate of their choice by Internet as well as fax, mail and in-person at polling places in more than 100 countries. Democrats Abroad is particularly proud of the online voting option — which provides a new alternative to the usual process of voting...

MEXICO CITY (AP) - This year, for the first time, expatriate Democrats can cast their ballots on the Internet in a presidential primary for people living outside the United States. Democrats Abroad, an official branch of the party representing overseas voters, will hold its first global presidential preference primary from Feb. 5 to 12, with ex-pats selecting the candidate of their choice by Internet as well as fax, mail and in-person at polling places in more than 100 countries. Democrats Abroad is particularly proud of the online voting option - which provides a new alternative to the usual process of...

In 2004, the Pentagon spent $576,000 developing the Interim Voting Assistance System to help overseas voters request and receive ballots. Seventeen people received ballots through it, according to a congressional report issued this summer. In 2006, the Pentagon spent another $1.1 million to improve the system. Eight people successfully used it, the Government Accountability Office found in its June report. But a nonprofit organization that runs entirely on a volunteer staff says it has created an online service that makes voter registration easier for Americans living abroad. The Overseas Vote Foundation’s Web site, www.overseasvotefoundation.org, allows Americans living in other countries...

Mexico Election Being Watched Here CHICAGO (WBBM Newsradio 780) -- Mexico faces weeks and possibly months of uncertainty after the leftist presidential candidate called for a recount of election results that showed him trailing his conservative rival by 1 percentage point. Mexican voters living in the United States overwhelmingly chose Felipe Calderon, the candidate for the National Action Party, or PAN. According to figures obtained from the Mexican Consulate in Chicago, about 57 percent of Mexican voters living in the United States voted for Calderon, versus about 34 percent for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador-who represents the Democratic Revolution Party, or...

Italo-Australians may have helped topple Silvio Berlusconi's government, Natasha Bita reports from Rome. CELEBRATING his election to the Italian Senate this week, Melbourne journalist Nino Randazzo fielded a phone call from party headquarters in Rome, worried whether he could be counted to support the centre-left Unione, the winner by a very small margin in a disputed tally. "Can we count on you?" the Italian politician grilled him. "Are you sure you will remain faithful to your commitment to support the Unione?" Randazzo was appalled. "I took it as an offence," he tells Inquirer. "I told him that Italians living overseas...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26, 2006 – U.S. servicemembers and federal employees stationed overseas need to act quickly to request absentee ballots for this year's primary and general elections, a Defense Department official said here yesterday. This year, U.S. citizens will elect 34 senators, the entire House of Representatives, 37 state governors, and hundreds of state and local officials. Primaries begin in March, and the general election is Nov. 7. To participate in their home states' elections, servicemembers and overseas citizens need to complete a Federal Post Card Application requesting an absentee ballot, said Scott Wiedmann, deputy director of the Federal Voting...

Despite polls showing American Jewish support locked in for US Sen. John Kerry, Republican boosters are confident that Jews in Israel will vote overwhelmingly to reelect President George W. Bush. The prediction is shared by Israeli pundits but scorned by Democratic stalwarts. "Which [US] Jews are voting Republican? It's Jews that are more traditional, and those who are more identified with Israel," said Kory Bardash, chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel. "That's exactly the demographic we have here." He estimated that up to 70 percent of American citizens in Israel will back Bush, pointing to party-crossing evident at Republican registration...

Election day came early for some American citizens living in Israel. Several dozen Americans gathered in a Tel Aviv apartment on Sunday to fill out their absentee ballots in a presidential election that is as hotly contested among partisans in Israel, as is the main battlefield in the United States. Laura Goldman decorated her living room with blue balloons for the Democrat-sponsored event. She put a mock ballot box prominently in the middle, where voters could place their completed ballots for delivery to the US Embassy. "I want to make it as easy as possible for people to vote," said...

Election day came early for some American citizens living in Israel. Several dozen Americans gathered in a Tel Aviv apartment on Sunday to fill out their absentee ballots in a presidential election that is as hotly contested among partisans in Israel, as is the main battlefield in the United States. Laura Goldman decorated her living room with blue balloons for the Democrat-sponsored event. She put a mock ballot box prominently in the middle, where voters could place their completed ballots for delivery to the US Embassy. "I want to make it as easy as possible for people to vote," said...

A few friends of mine in my apartment building got together this morning and filled out our absentee ballots and fed exed them. Vote count, 8-0 2 California voters. 1 Texas voter. 1 Pennsylvania voter. 3 New York voters. 1 New Jersey voter. BREAKING!!!!!!

Amid new evidence that civilians lagged far behind soldiers in voting from abroad four years ago, political operatives on both sides of the presidential campaign raced this week to help Americans overseas cast their ballots in time for next month's election. Sixty percent of the overseas military voted in the 2000 election, up from 53 percent in 1996, according to a new Pentagon report obtained yesterday by The New York Times. At the same time, voting by civilians dropped to 22 percent from 29 percent, the report said. Civilians' low participation rate is raising fears among Democrats who believe that...

The poll is in the upper left hand corner of the page. Only vote once!!! Voting more than once could invalidate all of your votes. They have already removed over 700 votes for Bush due to the fact that they orginated from two IP addresses. Oh yeah, here's the article that talks about the guy. http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/30170

our years after overseas voting became a battleground in the presidential election in Florida, millions of civilians and soldiers living abroad still face a bewildering and unwieldy system of absentee balloting that could prevent their votes from being counted. Election officials concede that tens of thousands of Americans overseas might not get ballots in time to cast votes. Late primaries and legal wrangling caused election offices in at least 8 of the 15 swing states to fail to mail absentee ballots by Sept. 19, a cutoff date officials say is necessary to ensure that they can be returned on time,...

Toronto — The sister of U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry on Thursday urged the more than 500,000 Americans living in Canada to register to vote in the November election. Diana Kerry was a keynote speaker at a reception at the University of Toronto Faculty Club on Thursday night, joined by the former U.S. ambassador to Canada, James Blanchard and other high-profile Democratic supporters. The younger sister of the Democratic presidential candidate says her brother is relishing the challenge of mobilizing this large group of American expatriates for the Nov. 2 vote. “John has always been a fighter, and he has...