US expats, take note: one-step online voter registration finally available

[dianeduane]

And not a moment too soon, if you ask me. This convenience comes to us courtesy of the Overseas Vote Foundation, a nonprofit / nonpartisan group devoted to cutting through the bureaucratic tangle for voters abroad.

The registration tool, known as RAVA, guides users through a process that first places them in one of three basic categories - overseas civilian, overseas military or family of overseas military - then asks for their home state, before guiding them to pages tailored to the laws and requirements of the appropriate state.

The swift system employs 128-byte encryption, the same as banks, to ensure security and privacy. Once the user downloads the completed form and prints it out to mail or e-mails it, all personal information is destroyed, Dzieduszycka-Suinat said.

The group does plan, however, to retain generic information on voters' states of origin and current whereabouts, which may help complete the still very fragmentary picture of the precise numbers and locations of overseas Americans.

This should make things a lot easier for when the next elections roll 'round...

Tags: voter, expat, expatriate, US citizen

Comments

[patgund.livejournal.com]

Coolness, thank you! The last election in California was the only one I've missed since I turned 18, and that's because I couldn't get any help on registering overseas. This is a majot benefit to me.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Hey, absolutely my pleasure. These guys helped me get registered last time (though less directly, via email and an address list and how-to page): this is going to make things even easier.

Overseas and Military Absentee Voters Continue to Face Voting Dificulties

[(Anonymous)]

February 8, 2007, Washington, D.C. Voting difficulties remain for U.S. Overseas and Military Absentee voters according to survey results announced today by the Overseas Vote Foundation. These difficulties include late and non-arriving ballots, missed registration deadlines, inability to get ballots witnessed or notarized, and confusing residency validation requirements.

The survey was conducted by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Overseas Vote Foundation. It was emailed to 46,144 overseas and military voters between November 8, 2006 and January 6, 2007. Total responses to the survey were 4,506.

The countries with the most respondents were Canada (25%), UK (11%), Germany (8%), France (6%), Australia (5%) and Japan (4%). The number of countries with at least one respondent was 142. The states in which the most respondents indicated they would vote were California (17%), NY (17%), Pennsylvania (5%), Illinois (5%) and Texas (5%). 55% of the respondents utilized the Internet in their voter registration or ballot request process in the 2006 election.

Additional detail is included in the survey results report. The survey results report is available on the OVF website at http://www.overseasvotefoundation.org.

Additional data regarding the absentee ballot process by overseas and military voters will be available when the in-process OVF 2006 Election Official Survey is completed in the spring of 2007.

– end –

Further Information
Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) was founded in 2005 to assist uniformed and overseas American citizens in registering to vote in federal elections. The corporation is registered in Delaware. OVF is the first and only nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(3) public charity organization dedicated solely to serving the voter registration needs of UOCAVA voters. As a public charity, OVF relies on donations to maintain its operations.