• New Jersey's email voting suffers major glitches, deadline extended to Friday

    Julio Cortez / AP

    Ed Lippman, 58, wears a message on his jacket on Election Day while walking home, Tuesday, Nov. 6, in Hoboken, N.J.

    By Bob Sullivan, Columnist, NBC News

    New Jersey's emergency experiment with email voting hasn't fared well. One election official described it as a "catastrophe" and voters are complaining that computer glitches are blocking their last-minute efforts to obtain electronic ballots. An avalanche of requests for email ballots that overwhelmed county clerks' offices forced the state to extend its email voting deadline to Friday afternoon at 8 p.m., though email ballot requests had to filed by 5 p.m. ET Tuesday.

    "It has become apparent that County Clerks are receiving applications at a rate that outpaces their capacity to process them without an extension," said Lt. Gov. Kim Guadango in her order extending the deadline.

    Several election officials say misunderstanding is at the root of the problem: Email ballots are only permitted for residents displaced by Superstorm Sandy, but many who are not displaced are nevertheless deluging the system.

    "The numbers are overwhelming. The county clerks are inundated with requests," said Michael Harper, clerk of the Board of Elections for Hudson County, N.J. which includes Hoboken, one of the hardest-hit regions recovering from Sandy. Asked to describe the situation, he said, "I would lean more towards catastrophe."

    New Jersey has taken the extraordinary step of allowing votes to be cast all the way up until Friday. This applies to voters in counties affected by Hurricane Sandy, and could make the state vulnerable to lawsuits. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

    New Jersey's email voting law allows overseas residents and active duty military to request ballots electronically; it was extended by state executive order on Saturday to apply to residents displaced by the storm.

    NBC News Justice Department correspondent Pete Williams said the extreme step of extending the voting deadline could expose New Jersey to lawsuits.

    "This raises some interesting legal questions," Williams wrote. "A federal law requires all states to choose their presidential electors the same day. But another law says if a state fails to do that, then its legislature determines how its presidential elections are determined. Some legal experts say they believe while New Jersey may be in technical violations of federal laws if it does this, it's Congress that makes the ultimate decision about whether to accept a state's electoral votes. And they doubt that Congress would fail to count the votes of a state brought to its knees by the storm. "

    Another hitch is this: Residents must email or fax their requests to their county clerk's office, which must respond individually to each request. The mountain of last-minute requests is crushing clerks' capacity to respond.

    Janet Larwa, the deputy clerk at the Hudson County Clerk's office, told NBC News there were eight workers trying to process 3,000 email requests as of mid-day Tuesday.

    Frustrations weren't limited to Hudson County. In Essex County, which includes the state's largest city, Newark, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit after it received 25 complaints from residents who said they'd requested email ballots, but hadn't received them. Voters reported that emails sent to the county clerk's office were bouncing, indicating the clerk's inbox was full or not functioning. 

    "You've got people who are trying to utilize this email or fax voting capabilities the state has said they are entitled to," Alexander Shalom, policy counsel for the ACLU, told NJ.com. "The counties are so overwhelmed with these requests, they are not able to reply. People have emailed in requests to get ballots and they are not hearing back."

    The ACLU sought a court order that would have allowed displaced residents to fill out a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, typically used by overseas voters who apply for but don't receive their blank absentee ballots in time, but an Essex County judge rejected the petition on Tuesday night.

    Essex County Clerk Christopher Durkin tried to ease the problem by giving out his personal email Hotmail address to voters, inviting them to send ballot requests there,  according to a message posted on the official Facebook page for West Orange, N.J., a city in Essex County.

    In Morris County, BuzzFeed.com reported that emails sent to that county's clerk were bouncing. The Daily Record reported the clerk there was struggling under a mountain of 1,000 requests.

    Harper, from Hudson County, said the problems stem from the wider email voting process being "thrown upon us at the last minute," not to mention the unprecedented volume. Larwa said that voters who aren't displaced from their homes are being turned down. Her office is calling some voters and denying their email ballot requests, telling them to go to their usual polling place. With power restored to much of Hudson County within the past 48 hours, very few polling locations have been relocated, she said.

    The problems might not stop with delivering email ballots, however. Experts are also worried that even if all New Jersey voters who need them receive email ballots in time, there will be confusion about submitting the ballots. The state's email voting procedure is a three-step process which is new to nearly all voters, and ripe for confusion, according to J. Alex Halderman, an electronic voting expert at the University of Michigan.  Voters must request a ballot electronically; email or fax the completed ballot to the clerk; then mail the original hard copy to the clerk. 

    "I'm not sure that voters will understand they still have to mail the ballot," Halderman said. "They may not be aware for requirement, even though it's on the form. If people don't do that, it will be fodder for lawsuits."

    Halderman is also concerned that computer hackers can intercept email ballots and alter votes, or otherwise electronically tamper with the process.

    "Email voting is tremendously risky ... you never want to make last minute change to an election process. That's a recipe for chaos," he said. "It's a reflection of desperation and seriousness of the situation New Jersey (post-Sandy) that officials are using email voting."

    Voting officials in New York apparently agree with Halderman. New York State Board of Elections co-chair Doug Kellner said during the weekend that his state rejected emergency email ballots because, "they're hackable and they're not verifiable," according to USA Today.

    Still, Halderman is worried that voters who get a taste of email voting may clamor for it in future elections.

    "We are definitely concerned that voters will want to have access to this again if they it convenient," he said. "But transmitting votes by email doesn't have good secrecy or integrity protection. It's easy to spoof an email, intercept an email, find it in someone's outbox and alter it ... It's possible to hack email servers and change votes after they are received. It's the highest level of risk for any kind of electronic voting." 

    With reporting by NBC News Talesha Reynolds.

    Follow Bob Sullivan on Twitter; He writes for NBC News at the Red Tape Chronicles.

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  • Nonvoters: They're too busy, fed up or say their vote doesn't count

    Courtesy photos

    For different reasons, Suzann Holland, of Monroe, Wis., Heather Felton, of Parrish, Fla., and Ryan King, of Buffalo, N.Y. will not be voting in the Nov. 6 elections.

    By Isolde Raftery, NBC News

    Tabitha Brown, 29, of Oregon, says she won't vote because she finds her ballot too confusing. “I’m just a simple girl," she said. "Dumb it down for us.”


    In Buffalo, N.Y., Ryan King, 19, said he won't vote because he doesn't know if he's registered. He mailed in a registration form, but no one replied, so he doesn't know where to show up. Further south in the Bronx, Lala, a woman who is staying at a shelter, isn't voting because she thought she needed a state ID, which she can’t afford. When she learned she didn’t need an ID, it was too late to register.

    Political pundits say undecided voters will determine the election, but little is said about people like Brown, King and Lala, who aren’t voting. Since the 1960s, voter turnout has steadily declined in the U.S., which already ranks near the bottom among established democracies. In 2008, 64 percent of voting-age citizens voted, compared with 93 percent in Chile, 86 percent in Germany and 74 percent in Canada.

    In this election, the fear is that some nonvoters may have wanted to vote. In Florida, voters cried out in frustration as polling stations became overwhelmed, and the Democratic Party had sued to extend early voting after some people were stuck on lines for hours trying to meet Saturday's deadline. NBC's Michael Isikoff reports.

    NBC News recently asked readers via Twitter, Facebook and through NBCNews.com to tell us why they won't cast their ballots. Their responses paralleled those from a 2008 survey by the U.S. Census Bureau: They don’t like their choices, they’re busy or they’re not interested.  

    Broken down, the least likely voters have the lowest level of education. In fact, the most pronounced voting gap in 2008 was not between young and senior (49 to 72 percent) but between those without a high school degree and those with advanced degrees – 39 percent to 83 percent.

    The wealthier are more likely voters -- 52 percent of those whose annual family income is less than $20,000 voted versus 80 percent among those whose families bring in more than $100,000. That could be partly because low-income people have more trouble taking time off work to vote.

    “Everyone’s pressed for time these days and therefore whether or not an employer is actively allowing people to vote the employees may feel time-pressed or constrained to take that legally protected time,” said Susan Schoenfeld, senior legal editor for Business & Legal Resources, which provides guidance to employers on human resources issues.

    Although some states require that employers give workers time off to vote, human resource experts say those laws are sometimes too confusing for employers and employees to understand.

    About 13 percent of those responding to the Census survey said they didn’t vote because they didn’t like the 2008 candidates. That theme emerged among our readers too – many of them women in their 30s and 40s – who said not voting was itself political. Leaving their forms blank was, in a sense, a vote of no confidence.

    “It feels like a third choice,” said Suzann Holland, a 41-year-old public library director from Monroe, Wis. “We tend to think we have two choices because third parties are not viable, but there is a third choice – to let other people decide because sometimes either choice goes against everything we believe in.”

    Holland has voted in the past but this year, she said the debates between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney “cemented my distaste for both candidates.”

    Breeanne Findley, 32, of Moline, Ill., is also fed up with Obama and Romney. She and her husband have five children between the two of them; she is a stay-at-home mom and is devoutly Pentecostal. 

    “I kept going back and forth, I looked online at who else was running for president – the Green Party and some other independent groups – but I didn’t like those guys either,” Findley said.

    Her sister-in-law was appalled, she said. “She says that I’m not allowing my voice to be heard, saying that I should reconsider because my vote matters, there these are things I need to be voting for.”

    She has decided it doesn’t matter who becomes president: “I’m a Christian and I believe that God is in charge. If this guy wins, it’s not the end of the world because God is still God.”

    In Parrish, Fla., Heather Felton, 37, said she found herself lost in the political middle. She is Catholic, opposed to abortion, but also opposed to the death penalty and in favor of gun control. She has nuanced views about immigration.

    “I posted to my Facebook page, ‘Who should I vote for? Give me a good moral reason,'” she said. “But people aren’t giving me a good moral reason. They’re presenting negative inflammatory language.”

    NBC's Tom Brokaw speaks with young voters grappling with a distrust of the political system.

    Back in New York, King, a student at Cansius College, is not alone in struggling with registering to vote. Six percent of nonvoters between the ages of 18 and 24 didn’t vote in 2008 because they didn’t know how or where to sign up, according to the Census data.

    After mailing in a voter registration form, he looked online for clues about where he should vote. He asked the College Democrats and the College Republicans at his school, but they told him they didn’t know.

    Increasingly jaded, King now questions whether his vote would count. (Which lands him in another Census category: Four percent of nonvoters said they didn’t register because they didn’t believe their vote would make a difference.)

    “I just feel so disenfranchised voting in New York,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. If I voted for Obama, it wouldn’t count, so why bother?”

    He added: “If you want me to vote so bad, at least meet me halfway.”

    In the Bronx, Lala was slightly sheepish to find out she didn’t need an ID to vote. (She used to live in Georgia, where ID is required.) But mostly, she said, she feels increasingly apathetic. More pressing was food for dinner and ultimately, a job. She checked her wallet – she had $30 to her name.

    She said she read Romney’s five-point plan but found it lacking and disjointed.

    “As much as I would love to be bitter about living in poverty during the Obama administration, I have to consider that the alternative is a man without a plan,” Lala said. Then she grew contemplative.

    “All I need is something as simple as a job,” she said. “I could have my quality of life back. I don’t know how voting is going to meet my immediate needs.”

    NBC's Allison Linn contributed reporting to this story.

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  • Immigrants voting for first time: 'I have the right to have a voice'

    Brandon Goodwin / TODAY.com

    Kadidja Ata, who is from Cameroon, is studying to become a surgeon and is voting for the first time this election.

    By Brooke Hauser, TODAY contributor

    When Kadidja Ata came to the United States from Cameroon five years ago, she knew one word in English: “Hi.”

    A refugee from the Central African Republic, she was 17, and she couldn’t read or write. But thanks in part to the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based agency that aids and resettles refugees around the world, Ata now speaks English and attends college. In August, she and her mother, Rose Nzata Ayeke, both became U.S. citizens, and on Nov. 6, like millions of other Americans, they will fulfill the ultimate act of civic responsibility: They will vote.

    And these brand new voters make up a pretty large block of the electorate. Since the 2008 presidential election, more than 2 million people have become naturalized, and next week many of them will be voting in a presidential election in the United States for the first time.

    For 22-year-old Ata, an aspiring surgeon who works as a cashier at Abercrombie & Fitch when she’s not studying biology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, the moment she casts her ballot will be especially meaningful. She was upended by a political war that claimed her father, who worked for the national assembly in the city of Bangui.

    “My mom didn’t let us know when he actually passed,” said Ata, who migrated with her mother and older brother to nearby Cameroon. “We asked her, ‘Where is Dad? Where is Dad?’ A few months later, she explained to us that he was murdered by rebels back home. She didn’t want us to be traumatized. She wanted us to settle down and forget about what had happened.”

    Because of her personal history, Ata, now a Bronx resident, told TODAY.com that she “never liked” politics, and yet she has spent the past few months learning about the U.S. Constitution, reading about the candidates and refining her opinions about issues including healthcare, education, social security and taxes.

    Courtesy of Dariana Castro

    Dariana Castro, who works at a school that teaches English to immigrants, decided to become a citizen and register to vote to provide a voice for her students.

    “I try to analyze the arguments and counterarguments and see who has better ideas,” she said.

    According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2,057,821 people became naturalized in the period of 2009-2011 (2012 figures are not yet available). The leading countries of birth of new citizens were Mexico, India, and the Phillipines, with the highest numbers of naturalizing persons living in California, Florida and New York.

    New Yorker Dariana Castro became a citizen in August and is voting for the first time next week. As coordinator of special programs at the International High School at Prospect Heights, a Brooklyn public school that teaches English to new immigrants and refugees from around the world, Castro has helped many students who fled their native countries because of political persecution and war.

    Despite her profession, Castro resisted the idea of becoming an American citizen for many years.

    “I was almost trying to make a statement,” explained Castro, who immigrated to New York City from the Dominican Republic at 10 years old. “[I was afraid] I was going to lose myself the moment I became an American. Having my Dominican passport was like holding onto my identity.”

    But she changed her mind after visiting a former student at an immigration detention center.

    “I realized on my train ride back that I’d been taking for granted the fact that I had access to the ultimate goal, the thing that everyone wants, the thing that everyone is working towards, the thing that my mom came here for. That’s when I really got serious about applying,” she said.   

    Castro registered to vote at her naturalization ceremony, in which the judge talked about the importance of exercising that right. She thought about her students, many of whom are undocumented.

    “So many decisions are being made that affect them, but none of these kids has a voice,” she said. “You feel responsible to go out and represent the voice of your students.”

    Zaw Htike, a 37-year-old Burmese refugee, knows what it’s like to feel voiceless. In his native country Myanmar (also known as Burma), which continues to make headlines for its brutal military regime and human rights violations, he was arrested for peaceful demonstration and originally sentenced to 21 years in prison. (He served almost seven years for the offense before being released early with a group of political prisoners.) Currently a case manager at the International Rescue Committee's Salt Lake City office, Htike has lived in the U.S. for five years, and last month he became a citizen.

    “I’m very excited because I never [voted] in my life before,” said Htike, who is now married to a Burmese woman from a different ethnic group, a union that would be unlikely in Myanmar. They have a three-year-old daughter, Snow, named for the white substance that was so foreign to them when she was born.

    “In my country, there’s no fair at all, and there’s no freedom at all. So, I believe I will definitely get a free and fair election here.” Still, he adds, “I’m a little hesitant after reading the campaign promises. I just want to vote for the right person.”

    Ata can relate to the sense of empowerment that comes with participating in her first U.S. election.

    “I feel that I have the right to say what I want to say. I have the right to have a voice.” She also feels proud of how far she has come since her first year in America, when so much was unfamiliar and intimidating.

    “The weather, the food, the currency — I felt like a newborn baby who was learning how to crawl and say first words,” she recalled. Now, “We are an American family, immersed in United States society.”

    And Ayeke can hardly contain her excitement at the prospect of casting her ballot.

    “I need to vote! I’m so happy to be American!” she said. “This is my country now.”

    Brooke Hauser is a New York-based writer and author of “The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens.”

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  • WWII veteran dies after casting last ballot from deathbed

    WWII veteran Frank Tanabe died Wednesday after voting via absentee ballot in Honolulu last week from his bed in hospice. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    By The Associated Press

    A World War II veteran whose effort to vote from his deathbed inspired thousands has died a week after casting his final ballot.

    Frank Tanabe passed away peacefully Wednesday at the Honolulu home of his daughter, where he's been in hospice treatment for the past few weeks after being diagnosed with an inoperable cancer tumor in his liver. He was 93.


    His daughter Barbara Tanabe said she put the American flag up outside the home to mark the day for him and their family.

    "He really liked it when I put out the flag," she said.

    Hundreds of thousands of Internet users saw a photo of Frank Tanabe filling out his absentee ballot with the help of his daughter last week, when his grandson posted the picture on the social media site Reddit.

    The image and his determination to vote on his sick bed struck a chord and prompted many to thank Frank Tanabe for his service and praise his patriotism. The story spread further when The Associated Press and other media organizations wrote about the photo and the response it generated online.

    Tanabe served in a mostly Japanese-American unit of the Military Intelligence Service during the war, interrogating Japanese prisoners in India and China.

    He volunteered for the Army from an internment camp where the U.S. government sent him as part of a policy to detain and isolate 110,000 Japanese-Americans after the start of the war with Japan. He spent time in both the Tule Lake camp in California and the Minidoka camp in Idaho.

    Decades later, Tanabe explained how he felt in an interview for a documentary tribute to Japanese-American veterans.

    "I wanted to do my part to prove that I was not an enemy alien, or that none of us were — that we were true Americans. And if we ever got the chance, we would do our best to serve our country. And we did," he said.

    Congress gave its highest civilian honor to Tanabe and other Japanese-American veterans of the war last year when it awarded the Congressional Gold Medal collectively to those who served in the MIS, the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

    Barbara Tanabe said she told her father about the news coverage his vote was getting, including stories that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on the front page of the Idaho Statesman.

    "I was thinking these are the two big newspapers in Idaho and California, where he went to camp," Barbara said. "It's just a nice way to look back at history and say that things do turn out OK."

    Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com

    Honolulu elections officials say Frank Tanabe's vote will be counted unless they receive his death certificate before the Nov. 6 election and they're able to find his ballot from among the tens of thousands of ballots mailed in.

    This generally isn't practical, so like most cases when a voter dies after he or she casts an absentee ballot, his ballot will likely be counted.

    His family knows which candidates he chose, but they've decided to keep that information private.

    Barbara Tanabe said it's not important who her father voted for — it's the voting itself that makes a difference.

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    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Are you planning NOT to vote in the November election?

    We’ve heard from undecided voters, and now we want to hear from those of you who will not vote in the Nov. 6 election. In 2008, 38.4 percent eligible voters didn’t cast a ballot, according to Factcheck.org.

    If you won’t vote – for whatever reason – and you’re game to be interviewed for a story we're running next week, please contact us.

    Thank you.

  • Federal court blocks Texas voting maps

    By NBC News wire services

    Correction: The first version of this story and its headline incorrectly described the issue decided by the federal court.

    A federal court has found evidence of discrimination in Texas voting maps drawn by the state's Republican-controlled Legislature.


    By holding that the redistricting discriminates against black and Hispanic voters, the court effectively killed the new districts before they could take effect for the Nov. 6 presidential election. November's election will instead use interim maps drawn by a federal court in San Antonio. 

    The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the ruling.

    The U.S. District Court in Washington ruled in a lengthy opinion Tuesday that state prosecutors failed to show Texas lawmakers did not draw congressional and state Senate district maps "without discriminatory purposes."

    Luis Vera, an attorney for the League of United Latin American Citizens, called the ruling "better late than never" and a win for his and other minority rights groups that sued the state over the maps.

    Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott immediately vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    The Obama administration in 2011 blocked the maps, arguing they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a law designed to protect the voting rights of minorities, primarily blacks in Southern states. 

    This article includes reporting by The Associated Press and Reuters.

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  • Every vote counts? For military members, only if they plan ahead

    By Jason Strachman Miller, NBC News

    Members of the armed forces face a unique set of logistical challenges when serving in other states or countries: many lack the ability to simply go to the DMV to renew their driver’s licenses, filing taxes can be complex and voting in elections can be even more confusing.


    "It is critically important to ensure that every voter entitled to an absentee ballot is given every chance to receive one,” said John Conklin, a spokesman for the New York State Board of Elections.

    According to the 2010 Post Election Survey Report to Congress, 85 percent of active duty military members were registered to vote, compared with 65 percent of the civilian voting age population. Due to the dilemmas associated with members of the military voting, approximately 120,000 active duty military personnel indicated they never received the absentee ballot they requested. 

    Here’s a brief guide to the voting process as it relates to service men and women:

    Why do states have different voting requirements?
    The Constitution gives each state the right to determine the "time, place, and manner" of all elections, including federal elections. As a result, there is great variation from state to state.

    “FVAP (Federal Voting Assistance Program) strongly supports the adoption of the Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act (UMOVA) as offered by the interstate Uniform Law Commission,” said Defense Department spokeswoman Eileen Lainez.

    “UMOVA sets uniform deadlines for receiving registration forms and ballot applications, and sets a minimum standard for electronic transmission of registration forms and blank ballots.”

    Seven states — Colorado, North Dakota, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia — and the District of Columbia have adopted UMOVA. In Hawaii, the measure has passed the legislature and is awaiting the governor's signature.

    Do I have to vote in my home of record’s election?
    Short answer: no. But remember that a service member’s home of record and home of residence are two different things.

    The home of record only applies to the state where a person physically entered the armed services and has nothing to do with where they reside, said Debi McGlothlin, the assistant installation voting officer at Kentucky’s Fort Campbell.

    “You can live in Arizona but go on vacation to Minnesota and decide to join the army from there. The Army will hold your home of record to Minnesota, but your residency on your LES (Leave and Earnings Statement) is going to be Arizona.”

    When in doubt, check your LES — the military version of a paystub. Then you’ll know what state you should be voting in.

    How do I register to vote?
    Service men and women should fill out Federal Post Card Application online, which serves as a voter registration form and an absentee ballot request. As part of this form, a “U.S. address for voting purposes” is required. This is your legal U.S. state of residence, as generally specified on your LES.

    It can be more confusing for spouses and eligible dependents to determine their state of residence. A wife or husband won’t receive their own LES spelling that information out.

    Family members and spouses should visit your post’s Installation Voter Assistance Office for help determining which state they should vote in.

    You can also check individual state residency requirements online. 

    FVAP.gov provides direct links to all 55 states and territories election websites where additional information is often available.

    Can’t remember if you’re registered at another location?
    After multiple moves it can be confusing to remember where you last registered to vote. If you think you registered at your home of record or another state you’ve lived in, there are multiple ways to check.

    “FVAP.gov is the 2012 election resource for military service members and overseas citizens,” said Lainez of the Defense Department. “Everything service members need this election season is available.”

    The site provides access to online registration and absentee ballot request systems, state-specific information and more.

    Additionally, members of the military and their families can get direct contact information for more than 7,800 local election offices, including names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and where they can check their prior voter registration status.

    Am I an absentee voter?
    You can vote absentee in local, state and federal elections if you are a U.S. citizen 18 years or older and are an active-duty service member (or dependent) and do not physically live in the state where you registered to vote.

    In order to request to vote absentee it’s important to fill out the Federal Post Card Application.

    FVAP recommends that voters register to vote and request an absentee ballot in January of each year, or at least 90 days before Election Day.

    “The ability for overseas voters to receive their ballot via e-mail has placed the ballot in their hands much earlier in the process and helped alleviates the problem of ballots being mailed back too late to be counted,” said Conklin from the New York State Board of Elections. “For the 2010 election we had the highest number of voters take advantage of the e-mail system to receive their ballots.”  

    Military members and their families can get additional help from nearly 10,000 assistance officers worldwide. Service members may locate a nearby Installation Voting Assistance Office here.

    “It is absolutely vital to have as much information as possible available online especially for the military and overseas voting community who can't just pick up the phone and call and ask questions,” Conklin said.

    I can’t guarantee the ballot will return in time, or it never arrived.
    While the postal service system is dependable to fixed locations overseas, like South Korea or Germany, having the additional challenge of service members constantly relocating around Afghanistan and other hostile areas can mean lengthy delays in delivering mail.  

    States and territories are required to mail ballots at least 45 days before an election. If you have not received your ballot 30 days before the election, contact your local election official.

    You can also vote using the back-up Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot. But in order to be eligible to use this back-up ballot, you must be absent from your voting residence and have applied for a regular ballot before that state’s deadline or 30 days before the general election. Also, in order to choose this option you must not have received the original absentee ballot as requested.

    If in doubt, contact your unit’s voting officer. Fort Campbell's McGlothlin said all units have a voting officer with them when they deploy who take the tools necessary — the hard copies of books and forms — along with them.

    “They’re all educated and they’re all geared up to go, in their tough boxes, when they get on the plane,” she added.

    Making your vote count
    Unlike the employees of most companies, every eligible voter in the military and their family can vote for their actual commander in chief.

    The men and women of our military are defending the interests of the United States all over the globe and a great deal of effort has been put forth to ensure they still have a voice at the ballot box on Election Day, McGlothlin said.  

    “They fight for this right and they need to use it, it’s their voice that’s going to make their lives easier.”

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