Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Web-Mailed Ballots: A Long Term Solution for Overseas Voters?

This week the director of the nation's leading military assistance voting program expressed his support for web-delivery as a long term solution to military absentee voting issues. Robert Cary, Director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program expressed confidence in use of the internet as a expedient form of ballot delivery. Cary stopped short of embracing a full transition to online voting, instead citing the reliability and time-saving benefits of making absentee ballots available via the internet. However, the return and accurate counting of these overseas ballots still remains an item of pressing debate. With the spotlight of the 2012 Presidential election approaching, thousands of overseas and absentee service members continue to await a clear and actionable solution to ensure their votes are counted accurately and consistently.

ROA has been a leading advocate to ensure that every deployed service member has adequate voting rights: ROA's efforts have focused on:
  • Working with the Federal Voting Assistance Program
  • Supporting Electronic Voting
  • Ensuring that every military absentee ballot is counted
ROA's Resolution No. 11-05 outlines actions and priorities in further detail.

These efforts have been led by the guidance and expertise of Service Members Law Center Director, CAPT Sam Wright. CAPT Wright has authored and co-authored over 500 reviews on areas of law affecting citizen warriors. The Law Review Library contains dozens of reviews addressing with military voting rights.

As Federal efforts to improve the quality and consistency of the overseas voting process progress ROA will continue its advocacy for processes which ensure a complete accounting of all service members' votes.

1 comment:

sap project said...

Seems like a perfect solution for overseas voters, in my honest opinion. But on the other hand, I've never been in that situation to vote overseas since I've been living here all of my life. Well, let's let the politicians do their jobs for once.