Posted on 10/25/2008 5:45:37 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
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. Les’ Melnyk, a FVAP spokesman.
The Overseas Vote Foundation, a nonprofit voter advocacy group, averaged about 32,000 visits a day in September to www.overseasvotefoundation.org and other OVF-supported sites, such as obama.overseasvotefoundation.organd mccain.overseasvotefoundation.org.
This is the first election in which presidential candidates have offered such services to overseas voters, according to Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, head of OVF.
"Nothing like this was on the Kerry or Bush campaigns," she said. "It didn’t exist yet."
Numerous states have also signed on with OVF to use the group’s Web site programs, which offer everything from absentee ballot information by state to a tool that helps voters fill out and request absentee ballots based on their state’s unique requirements.
The OVF sites saw more than 3.5 million visitors this year and nearly half a million visits alone in the first week of October, Dzieduszycka-Suinat said.
"All measures point toward more votes coming in from the military and overseas than ever," she said. "We are very curious to see how this affects actual turnout and whether election officials are able to cope with this massive increase."
About 145,000 absentee ballots were mailed to overseas military voters between Sept. 8 and Oct. 14, according to the Military Postal Service Agency. While some states now offer fax and e-mail transmission of ballots, snail mail is still the most common delivery option.
While MPSA representative Shari Lawrence said the agency didn’t have ballot transmission numbers for the 2004 election cycle, about 119,000 overseas military ballots were mailed out from election offices in 2006. Of those, only about half were counted, according to the federal Election Assistance Commission.
Of the 145,000 ballots MPSA handled from the States, about 104,000 voted ballots were mailed back to the States as of Oct. 14.
About 13,000 of the ballots coming from the States were returned because they were undeliverable as addressed, according to the MPSA.
Despite what appears to be an increase in military voter participation this year, Dzieduszycka-Suinat said the primary problem continues to be troops not getting their ballots in time to vote.
The OVF site offers an electronic version of the federal write-in absentee ballot, an emergency ballot for federal elections available if a registered overseas voter didn’t receive their state’s absentee ballot in time.
While improvements are being made at various levels to help overseas military voters, challenges remain, Dzieduszycka-Suinat said.
"I still have reports from military guys who haven’t gotten their ballots in eight years," she said.
Hopefully the military votes will be counted!!
Tell that to Virginia where they are throwing overseas military ballots away. The story has been posted on FR more than once.
I’m pretty sure that the German and French voters are going to sink us.
On the plus side: the lefties keep sniveling that the youth vote’s voice needs to be heard...well these are the youth that will actually turn out to vote
On the minus side: “community” organizers will be getting as many of them rejected and tossed as they can, while the pets of dead illegal immigrant felons will be voting at multiple precincts (in their parents’ states as well as where they go to school, plus wherever the family vacation house is)
Why not, the number of overseas contributors to Obama has broken records.
I wonder if many of the overseas voters will be Americans qualified to vote or just the middle easterners for Obama. I wish they respected the military vote.
I never got my ballot, and was only able to vote by getting my ballot e-mailed to me after my mom complained about it this week (I'm stationed in Germany). Never got my primary ballot, either.
I’m stationed in Germany, BTW...
Military = great
European wanna bes = not so great
I’ll bet the standard for valid military ballots is higher than the standard for the other valid ballots cast from outside our borders.
I have never seen anything like voting in the Year of Our Lord 2008. Ballots are coming from all places and are cast at all times during the last few months. We need election reform. No one may vote who has not resided in a State for 180 days and the county for ninety days prior to an election; that all prospective voters must personally appear before a person authorized to administer oaths and swear, orally and in writing that he is a citizen and a resident as aforesaid; if a person moves within a state he must reregister; if a person does not vote in a general election he must re-register; every one except for active duty military must appear personally at the polling place in their district and show identification; no person unable to read, write and speak the English language shall be allowed to vote; college students must return home and vote at their parents precinct. In short this present crap is overwhelming any reasonable controls protecting the system.
Makes one wonder why.
Should someone who moves in the 180 days prior to an election not be allowed to vote at all, or should they vote in the place they used to live, or what?
No vote at all. As an aside this was the law in my state until about the 1970’s if I remember correctly. Think about it it prevents what is going on in Ohio right now. People are flooding in to turn the state in favor of “HIM” About 2000 people were moved into Lousiana a few years back to vote in the right candidate.
I would have to disagree with such a plan. I would see no reason why half of the people who happen to move in 2008 should be disenfranchised (given that leases are usually for twelve months, people often don't get to choose precisely when they move). If someone can prove (by showing a lease, mortgage, deed, or other such instrument) that they live at a particular address, and if election officials can confirm that the person has unregistered from the previous address, what purpose would the 180-day twilight zone serve?
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