The Overseas Vote Foundation deserves credit for the new suite of online tools launched with its newly revamped Web site. The applications help military and civilian U.S. citizens living abroad gather information on absentee voting and navigate the maze of local voter registration procedures.
Electronic-voting technology is under a lot of scrutiny these days. Touted by some as a way of improving the efficiency and security of the voting process and opening it up to wider participation, it is condemned by others who say its potential for abuse scales right along with the benefits. But OVF?s efforts show that even when IT cannot do everything for us, it can be used to solve at least some of our problems.
As its name implies, the Overseas Vote Foundation focuses on just a small slice of the U.S. electoral process: Ensuring that persons living outside the country have the opportunity to exercise their rights to vote. Small as that slice might be, it is a significant challenge. There are an estimated 6 million eligible voters living overseas, many of them active-duty military personnel stationed in war zones. But according to the Election Assistance Commission, fewer than 1 million of these persons requested absentee ballots for the 2006 elections, and only a third of those ballots were actually cast or counted. Most of the ballots could not be delivered because of bad addresses.
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/45309-1.html
