Clair Whitmer
Director, Voter Outreach
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For decades military and overseas voters have endured discouraging odds against ballots that don't arrive in time to actually vote; notarization and other requirements that seem to deliberately discourage voting; and a knowing sense that the Internet could dramatically improve their voting process.

The good news is that this week the government acted to fix these problems.

The $68 billion National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the President October 28th, is a huge layer cake of funding and policy. One of those layers is the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, a law that not only includes several specific changes designed to modernize the process and increase enfranchisement of overseas and military voters but signals a change in the legislative 'attitude' toward their (our) issues.

The federal government guaranteed us the right to vote in 1989 with the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). A few attempts to update the law to match the times have been made since its enactment, but it has largely been stagnant. MOVE demonstrates a new willingness bring the law into the current century.

How so? Let's look at the three main planks in MOVE:

• elimination of notarization requirements for overseas ballots in the states that still require this, as well as other registration requirements imposed specifically on UOCAVA voters.

These kinds of requirements have already been gradually disappearing, state-by-state. This may seem like a no-brainer to the layperson, but by taking across-the-board action, the government is fast-forwarding uniformity in registration requirements

• requiring all states to make voter registration and absentee ballot applications available electronically, as well as General Election information. MOVE also requires that all states make a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, matching the design and functionality launched last year by Overseas Vote Foundation, available online for when official ballots don’t arrive in time.

Here again, the government is picking a tool for the states - the Internet - and requiring everybody on the team to use it. Will this help? Indeed it will: sending blank ballots online can substantially cut the amount of time required for the voting process.

Once states commit to fully enfranchising overseas voters, dramatic changes can take place very quickly. Overseas Vote Foundation recently published a Case Study on the remarkable story of Minnesota which - through a combination of focused outreach, electoral rules changes and the use of a OVF-hosted website created specifically for overseas voters - increased the number of UOCAVA ballots returned by a stupendous 282 percent in 2008 over 2006. (Minnesota Takes the Lead;https://www.overseasvotefoundation.org/research-intro-OVF-reports

A website alone won't guarantee those kinds of results; but Minnesota voter feedback makes it clear that the use of electronic communication via a website and plain-old-email is a critical element in increasing participation.

Let's be clear: this use of the Internet to deliver voting materials is not the same thing as Internet-based voting. We at OVF - and many other voting advocates - believe there are still too much risk of identity theft, fraud and confidentiality to conflate these two. MOVE modernizes the balloting process without entering these muddy waters.

• mandating states to plan for a 45-day window for the ballot "round-trip".

Truth be told, this element of MOVE is already causing headaches for election officials and the implications for the overall voting process are substantial.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has already come out asking his state legislature to move up his state's primary by a month. The Associated Press has reported that Vermont's Secretary of State, Deborah Markowitz, has done the same.

The problem is that many primaries are quite simply too late for this new overseas and military ballot sending timeline. You can't print a ballot with knowing who won the primary, and states that currently hold September or August primaries don't have enough time to print and send the ballot 45 days prior to the election.

Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin all also hold September primaries; Colorado and Washington hold them in mid-August.

According to AP, Colorado, New York, Washington and Wisconsin are already planning to request waivers to this just-passed requirement and there may be more. On the other hand, some states are already talking about faxing and emailing ballots as a workaround for this calendar problem.

But, without diminishing the importance and difficulty of this question, overseas voters must applaud the principle of MOVE: making sure that our votes count is now more important than the logistical difficulties of the states, and HAVA will provide funding for these improvements.

Some overseas voting proponents are disappointed that MOVE does not also extend voting rights to American citizens born overseas. However, a draft law from the Uniform Law Commission proposes to do this on a state-by-state basis and as such, may provide a solution. (See last month's posting.)

Support for MOVE was intensified by the testimony of active duty military on our two fronts being disenfranchised due to late or non-arriving ballots. And indeed, what better symbol could there be of the weaknesses in our electoral system than soldiers willing to die for their country not being able to vote for their own country's leaders?
The MOVE Act is not the end-of-the-story for overseas and military voting rights. However, it is a dramatic and significant step forward which bodes well for continued improvements in the arena of overseas and military voting.