Absentee Voting

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Created on Wednesday, 01 October 2014 15:41
Written by Cassandra Bernier

voting overseasNORTHEAST KINGDOM- There are many voters registered to vote in the United States, but when it comes to election time they are not actually living on United States soil.

 

 

 

In the 2012 presidental election almost 900,000 ballots were sent out to members of the uniformed services and overseas citizens. Out of those near one million ballots, only about six hundred thousand were returned for counting. 

 

 

 A major problem with overseas' ballots is the fact that not all of them are returned on time. 

"We have voters in all parts of the world so it varies quite a bit," Barnet's Town Clerk Ben Heisholt commented. "I've seen ballots come in several weeks to a month after."

This year Barnet had to send about 20-30  ballots to abroad votes. The town sends them all over the world including Canada and Japan. 

Many towns around the Northeast Kingdom have no voters abroad that need ballots sent to them. Among these towns are Burke and Peacham. 

The first federal absentee voting law was the Soldier Voting Act of 1942. This was to guarantee the right for Armed Forces to vote while away at war. 

The latest version of the law was signed into law by President Obama. This law is called the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, requiring states to establish procedures to permit absent uniformed services voters and overseas voters to request voter registration and absentee ballot applications by mail and electronically for all federal elections. 

As stated in the law above, absentee voters will recieve their ballots differently. 

"They can request a ballot the same way anybody would request one. The difference is in the delivery of the ballot. The difference for them is they can recieve the ballot electronically," Hiesholt said. 

All fifty states plus the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam and Puerto Rico transmit ballots for overseas voting. The largest amount of ballots to be sent out is from Texas.

In the 2008 Presidental Election Texas had to send out 549,219 ballots to their residents that were abroad.

In the same election Vermont had the smallest amount of ballots being sent out. That number was only 10,546.

Heisholt thinks that overseas voting will always need to happen but the number of voters will depend on how big the election is.