How the US Military votes:
1. If the military person is stationed in the US, they may request a ballot from the county where their residence still is and they are on that county voting list, or where they last lived if they don’t have a residence in that county anymore but are on the voting list of that county. Or, they may register to vote in the county where they are stationed.
2. Overseas military ballots
These ballots are in a special looking envelope to designate them from regular early voting envelopes. They are readily identified as military ballots due to the envelope having a different look than regular ballot envelopes.
3. There is a designated military election officer at every post where our military is stationed across the world. This officer distributes ballots and ballot envelopes and gathers the ballot envelopes and mails them to the US county where the military person last lived, whether or not they are on that county’s voter list. If they are not on that county’s voter list, their name is added to the voter list and the ballot counted.
4. The military ballots have “x” number of days after the election for those ballots to come in if they are late (after election day). The ballots are counted then. Normally, they are not late. They are usually in the county by the time early voting is over and before election day.
I was the Judge of the Early Voting Ballot Board in my county and it is that board that qualifies all mail in ballots - that is why I know military ballot envelopes are different in look.
One time, I spoke to a military ballot officer so I know how those ballots get to the states.
We had a problem in Florida during the Bush/Gore election when the ballots were recounted. The people doing the recounting didn’t understand about military ballots and they were rejecting those ballots where the military person wasn’t on the county voter list, or the ones that came in a day or two after the election. I spoke to the state Republican Chairman in Florida and went over the law with him and those military ballots got counted. I was also in contact with the Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, during this Florida fiasco election.
After that election, new election laws were passed, one of those laws doing away with ballots that created “chads”. Those are not used anymore.
That was one good thing - no more chads.