For the second time, FAWCO’s partner Overseas Vote Foundation is making it possible for military and overseas (UOCAVA) voters to request a ballot for the extremely important 2010 U.S. “midterm” election using a FAWCO-specific OVF-designed voter registration website. We are proud to join the National Association of Secretaries of State and the several State websites in the U.S. which benefit from OVF's technology. The MOVE Act of 2010 requires that voters request their ballots each year so don’t get caught with an imminent primary you’re not ready for! (Massachussetts voters, click here for an important note about your January 19 election!) Click request ballot to access the website and follow the very clear and user-friendly directions.
Whereas the law said that, starting in 2002, voters were registered for two full election cycles (4 years), MOVE has changed that. While states still have the option of sending ballots overseas automatically, some voters who had become accustomed to receiving ballots without requesting them will be surprised not to see one in the mail this year.
Most of the far-too-many voters whose ballots were not counted in 2008 owe that to late or incorrect ballot requests (nearly 1/3 of all voters). The highly secure and totally confidential FAWCO-OVF website can change all that.
On the FAWCO Military and Overseas Voter Services page, you and voters that you refer to our site can:
- directly and easily request your ballot, getting step-by-step guidance as you fill out your request, then download, print, sign and mail it to the address provided;
- be assured of security -- the site runs as an https:// totally secure site (128/256 bit Secure Socket Layer [SSL] encryption technology), the technology used by all major bank and credit card companies to ensure privacy while doing business over the Internet;
- easily access contact details for your local election official;
- get state- and district-specific information on primary dates and ballot request deadlines;
- access a FAWCO Voter Help Desk
Our policy on personal and confidential data handling mirrors that of OVF – forms are generated on demand only, they are not kept by the system. You can save your data in a convenient Voter Account for easy access to reprint your Registration Form or a Write-in Ballot, but confidential ID information and birthdate information are not stored and must be re-entered to reprint forms.
FAWCO will be able to generate valuable aggregate marketing statistics based on the voters registering on our site. This includes only non-confidential information (i.e. no addresses, etc.) – aggregated for reporting purposes only. Such information is very important when our representatives go to Washington and provides a valuable picture of the overseas population.
At Overseas Americans Week 2009, for example, we were able to tell legislators that of the relatively small population we registered (the website was active for only 6 weeks), we identified the top 18 states in which our registrants vote (led, not surprisingly, by NY, CA, TX, MI, FL, MA, NJ, CT and OH) and found that 33.5% had lived abroad for 10 years or more while slightly over 3% had never lived in the United States (young US citizens born abroad).
This is the first time that an organization like FAWCO has offered a service like this – voter registration and ballot request personalized for its members.
We not only thank Overseas Vote Foundation for once again extending this service to our members and visitors to our website, but truly encourage you to use this totally non-partisan, “overseas-oriented” service yourselves; inform your friends, family and colleagues and encourage them to use it; and pass on the information to others in your community. Not only will you have the satisfaction of contributing to a very important “corner of the snapshot”, but you can help, in this terribly important election year**, in directly assisting a significant percentage of overseas voters directly from the FAWCO “webhouse”.
**Remember that if you like the current Congress, you need to vote to show that support, and if you don't like it, you need to vote to express your discontent! Sartre said that saying nothing is already saying something....
