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Tight timelines can squeeze absentee ballots

As the election season gets into full swing, it’s important for you and your family to know your legal rights in electing a new commander in chief (a.k.a., the president of the United States of America) when you’re away from home.

This is one of a handful of times in your military career that you get to vote on selecting a member of your chain of command. This is a particularly important election year, with not only the presidency and vice-presidency up for grabs, but many Senate and House seats as well.

There are three time-consuming steps in absentee voting for service members. First, you have to send a request for an absentee ballot to your hometown elections officials. Second, those officials must send the unmarked ballot to you. Finally, you have to send your marked ballot back to the elections officials.

And it all has to be done according to tight timelines that leave little room for dawdling. In 35 states, your marked ballot must be physically received (not just postmarked) by elections officials by the close of the polls on Election Day, or the ballot will not be counted.

Each of these steps could be accomplished in seconds if secure electronic systems for absentee voting were authorized, but the sad fact is that most states have not yet authorized such systems, so none will be in place for this election.

That means you must build in enough time for each of the three steps to happen by snail mail. That’s why I’m writing this article in September.

If you have not yet applied for your 2008 absentee ballot, do so today. If you are on active duty or an active-duty family member, you can use the Federal Post Card Application as a simultaneous voter registration application and absentee ballot request. You can obtain a blank FPCA from your unit’s Voting Assistance Officer, or you can go to OverseasVoteFoundation.org and click on “Military Voter Services,” then follow the directions.

That site will provide you with a “wizard” who will ask you a series of questions and produce for you an FPCA that is complete, correct and legible, along with signing instructions and the address where you should mail the application.

The FPCA is misnamed. Once a postcard, the current version, issued in 2003, now folds and goes into a sealed envelope. If your unit has only the old version, ask them to get the new one for you. Military personnel should not have to risk identity theft by putting personal information (including date of birth and Social Security number) on a postcard.

After you submit your completed FPCA, you should then obtain and complete the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot from the same Web site or your unit’s VAO.

You can use the FWAB to vote for federal offices (president, U.S. senator, U.S. representative) in the general election. You mark this special ballot by writing in the names of your favored candidates or by marking “Republican nominee” or “Democratic nominee” if you cannot obtain the names. This is a poor substitute for a regular absentee ballot, but it beats being disenfranchised entirely.

If you receive your regular absentee ballot from your hometown election official after you have submitted the FWAB, mark and send in the regular ballot, as well, along with a note to the effect that you already submitted the FWAB.

If election officials receive your regular ballot in time to count it, they will set aside and not count your FWAB. But if you don’t receive the regular ballot in time, at least you will have had the opportunity to vote for federal offices.

If you don’t think your vote matters, consider that the 2000 presidential election came down to a few hundred votes in Florida. And the 2004 race for governor in Washington state was decided by 129 votes.

Many troops based in the U.S. vote absentee because they’re stationed in a different state than their state of official residence. Transit time for domestic mail is usually not a major issue.

But if you’re voting absentee from an overseas location, don’t wait to request your ballot or you might not have time to make your vote count.

The information in this column is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice. Readers are encouraged to seek the advice of an attorney or other professional when an opinion is needed.

Mathew B. Tully Esq. is a field artillery officer in the New York National Guard and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is also the founding partner of Tully, Rinckey and Associates (http://www.fedattorney.com), a law firm in Albany, N.Y. E-mail your legal questions to askthelawyer@militarytimes.com.