Domain: fvap.gov
Stories and comments across the archive that link to fvap.gov.
Comments · 15
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Re:They didn't succeed though
Still millions of ballots that will never be counted.
Absentee ballots in most states with clear winners are not counted.
False. All votes are counted, absentee or otherwise. It may take awhile, and elections may be called before the ballots are all counted, but they are indeed all counted.
http://help.vote.org/article/8...
https://www.fvap.gov/vao/vag/a... -
Re:And how is this not a legitimate point?
All votes are counted, absentee or not. Previous posters provided these useful links:
http://help.vote.org/article/8...
https://www.fvap.gov/vao/vag/a... -
Re:And how is this not a legitimate point?
If it really works that way (and I could not find information to prove or disprove that theory), they might have a point.
But it doesn't really work that way, and if you applied even an iota of critical thinking, you'd realize why it can't.
Did you vote on Tuesday? Did your ballot really only have a single multiple choice item for President of the United States? Because mine didn't. My had president, senator, representative, state senator, state representative, city council member, state supreme court justice (multiple), municipal court justice (multiple), family court justice (one or two), and multiple local millages.
My wife's absentee ballot, being that she lives with me and all, was identical. Which means that whether Trump defeated HRC by several hundred thousand votes or a few hundred, there were many other races where her vote was relevant to the outcome, and the presidential election was not the end-all-be-all of whether all those little bubbles would be scanned by the county's equipment.
"The media often will report the projected outcome of the election before all of the ballots are counted. In a close election, the media may report that the outcome cannot be announced until after the absentee ballots are counted. However, all ballots, including absentee ballots, are counted in the final totals for every election - and every vote (absentee or in-person) counts the same."
The ability to project a winner in a top-of-ballot race does not eliminate the need to count absentee ballots in all other races.
And suspicion is reinforced by their (The Verge) obvious attempt to discredit the messenger by noting (Michael also believes that Trump has been singled out by God to be president of the United States).
Tell you what, why don't you actually telephone your county board of elections as ask them yourself rather than settling for discrediting the messenger only when it suits you.
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Re:US Post Office always secure.
So little imagination... or knowledge.
If the ballot itself has a unique id that is correlated to the voters request... that means that Oregon lacks a secret ballot.
More so, even if we assume it's difficult to print identical looking ballots for some stuffing operations... there are cases when it is legitimate to print your own ballot, say you are overseas in the military, hell, our own federal government has a page for doing this, here is the one for Oregon: https://www.fvap.gov/oregon
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Re:IA - no issues
I mailed in my absentee ballot for Black Hawk County this afternoon. However, I had to use a FWAB because I never received the ballot I requested a month ago. I waited until the last day for that ballot, and finally went to the local (de-facto) embassy for Plan B.
Every time I always check the box to continue receiving ballots at my current address, but somehow that never seems to "stick", I always have to proactively request a ballot.
Frankly, this is a national embarrassment for the USA. Our election process is so fucked up with machines and such. Here in Taiwan (where I live) they have no machines and use only paper ballots. After the polls close, they hand-count the ballots in public view and results are usually complete within 2~3 hours.
We can do better, folks. We must demand better.
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Re:double-edged sword
Thank you for helping me learn something today. And thank you for helping me get MAD AS HELL about this.
It was pretty stupid of me not to realize states varied. Checking, I think there are 5 states in that category. I had no idea there were states that corrupt. I don't know why such restrictions are even federally allowed in federal elections. I do find that if you are in the military on active duty (whether or not overseas), or if you are a U.S. citizen residing overseas, for federal elections and primaries, they can't stop you from getting a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB) and filling it in and returning it. As a matter of fact, you can go to Federal Voting Assistance Program and do it on-line.
I would just lie and tell them I am living overseas. I would use an overseas acquaintance for the mailing address, or an overseas web proxy to use the website. Or I would tell FVAP I need assistance because my state elections are run corruptly and they won't let me vote for my choice.
Or at least I like to think I would.
Can anyone tell me, for the sake of general knowledge, if there is any place in Europe as corrupt as this?
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Re:Maybe the media is what he wants.
If you are still a US citizen and qualified to vote, your legal address and state would be the very last address and state that you lived at before going abroad even if you no longer maintain any ties to that address. You can find out more at the federal voting assistance website. The legal address requirements I cited was pulled directly from their faq sheet on this topic. This site seems to be pretty comprehensive and should be able to help you a lot.
It may be too late for you to vote in this election because a lot of states voter registration deadlines have passed. But whoever denied you the ability to register and vote steered you the wrong way on this. This process was in place back when I lived overseas 15 years ago and isn't anything new. The U.S. embassy or consulate in your area should be able to provide you with the necessary forms and instructions (like you last legal residence) but the FVAP website I linked to should give you all the information you need too.
Something you should be aware of though. If your earning a living from living abroad, you might have some tax filing requirements in your particular state. In my case, I only had to file the tax forms and report my income on the federal forms and the state didn't take any taxes from me but I needed to file the return for some reason. I imagine that if I earned more money, I might have had to pay some state taxes. I used an accountant who specialized in this area because of the specifics and complexity of the situation. If you have been neglecting the tax requirement's for your home state, you might end up eventually having to clear that up. It shouldn't be anything dependent on your voting though, well at least not for this election or any future ones unless you are convicted of some related felony. But they all know that people don't understand a lot of this stuff and give you an opportunity to file amended and late returns.
I mention this only because if you haven't filed US taxes while living abroad, giving your name and address to the government may cause them to start requesting them. Living abroad doesn't dissolve your US citizenship and if you are paying foreign taxes, the form for reporting foreign income while living abroad (From 2555 I think) will allow you to apply your foreign taxes to your American obligations. No matter what your situation, you if your otherwise eligible, your situation doesn't preclude you from voting.
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Re:Maybe the media is what he wants.
If you are still a US citizen and qualified to vote, your legal address and state would be the very last address and state that you lived at before going abroad even if you no longer maintain any ties to that address. You can find out more at the federal voting assistance website. The legal address requirements I cited was pulled directly from their faq sheet on this topic. This site seems to be pretty comprehensive and should be able to help you a lot.
It may be too late for you to vote in this election because a lot of states voter registration deadlines have passed. But whoever denied you the ability to register and vote steered you the wrong way on this. This process was in place back when I lived overseas 15 years ago and isn't anything new. The U.S. embassy or consulate in your area should be able to provide you with the necessary forms and instructions (like you last legal residence) but the FVAP website I linked to should give you all the information you need too.
Something you should be aware of though. If your earning a living from living abroad, you might have some tax filing requirements in your particular state. In my case, I only had to file the tax forms and report my income on the federal forms and the state didn't take any taxes from me but I needed to file the return for some reason. I imagine that if I earned more money, I might have had to pay some state taxes. I used an accountant who specialized in this area because of the specifics and complexity of the situation. If you have been neglecting the tax requirement's for your home state, you might end up eventually having to clear that up. It shouldn't be anything dependent on your voting though, well at least not for this election or any future ones unless you are convicted of some related felony. But they all know that people don't understand a lot of this stuff and give you an opportunity to file amended and late returns.
I mention this only because if you haven't filed US taxes while living abroad, giving your name and address to the government may cause them to start requesting them. Living abroad doesn't dissolve your US citizenship and if you are paying foreign taxes, the form for reporting foreign income while living abroad (From 2555 I think) will allow you to apply your foreign taxes to your American obligations. No matter what your situation, you if your otherwise eligible, your situation doesn't preclude you from voting.
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Americans in the UK, Unite!
Saving bandwidth? The Bush campaign has raised hundreds of millions of dollars--who cares about a couple hundred or thousand more a month spent on bandwidth when you're buying in multi-gb blocks anyway?
I'm living in the UK and have been for years. It would be nice to be able to view his site, if only because he has a chance (against my vote and wishes) of becoming president so it is important I know about his views, and I be able to see, for example, copies of the ads that I cannot view because I do not get US TV.
If I was undecided, like some of my collegues, I as a NJ resident are entitled to waive my secret ballot and vote by fax up until election day (some states allow this). If you are living abroad I encourage you to do this asap by going to http://www.fvap.gov/pubs/onlinefpca.pdf and following the instructions on the form. As long as the fax is received by 2 Nov, and the real ballot is received no more than I think 1 week later, that vote is valid and will be counted (well, possibly, given past experience). The fact that actual voters both civilians and potentially military personel (even if all on-base traffic went through US proxies, which is dubius, as people might feel more comfortable using the net at a cafe or otherwise off base) will be denied valuable information that is needed to make an informed electoral decision. Given that US citizens via taxes and other means provide matching funds for those candidates, what this essentially means is that we can't see the fruits of something we helped, however indirectly, fund, and by extension, create(georgewbush.com).
Also, we need to understand that whomever is elected US President has a great deal of influence not only on Americans--so it would be a positive move, in the spirit of liberty and transparency, for those abroad to be able to view the information surrounding someone's candidacy, even if those persons cannot vote.
The bottom line is that actively seeking to prevent the dissemination of information about candidates for an election as important as the US Presidential election, when we know that cost is not an issue for the campaigns, speaks volumes about the candidate and his views. It is in keeping with the tradition of the Patriot act, fingerprinting and photographing even those US vistors from countries that do not require a visa to enter the US.
I don't know why the Campaign is doing this; it's an idiot decision that can only produce severely negative PR outside the US (as if more of this was needed--we're not the most popular team in town even in the UK) and probably within the US as well. Perhaps the reason is that Bush is writing off the expatriate vote anyway (military aside, it's overwhelmingly democratic / liberal) and feels that his views are providing too much ammunition to anti-us views abroad. Blocking access, though, is a childish, counter-productive, and heavy handed solution.
But from George W.--who would expect any less? -
One reason to "waste" their bandwidth.
Citizens of the USA can vote using absentee ballots even if they are in other countries.
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YOU can make file sharing legalIt is within your power to put a stop to this nonsense. But you have to act now.
In Change the Law I point out that while the Constitution allows for Congress to enact copyright laws, it doesn't actually require it to do so. Copyright could be repealed tomorrow if we could get enough votes in Congress to do so.
If you don't think this could happen, consider that there are more Americans sharing files via peer-to-peer networks than voted for George Bush in 2000.
In my article I detail a number of steps you can take to bring about much needed copyright reform. My suggestions are that you:
- Speak Out
- Vote
- Write to Your Elected Representatives
- Donate Money to Political Campaigns
- Support Campaign Finance Reform
- Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Practice Civil Disobedience
If you're a US citizen and 18 years of age or over, you can vote in November. But to do that, you must be registered to vote in your state. The voter registration deadline for most states is just a few days away, October 2nd for most states. So register today! Rock the Vote can help you with registration.
If you're a US citizen residing in a foreign country like me (I live in Canada), you can register to vote with the form you can obtain from the Federal Voting Assistance Program. You can register to vote in the last state you resided in in the US. But again, your registration must be received by your state by the deadline, so either express your application, or fax it, if a fax number is available.
(If you've never lived in the US, but one of your parents was a US citizen, then you're a US citizen too and you can register in the last state your parent resided in.)
If you want to make a campaign donation, a good choice would be Representative Rick Boucher. Rick Boucher has worked tirelessly for copyright reform, as you can see from his article Time to rewrite the DMCA.
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Re:typical government...
Gee, 15 seconds on the website, and I found this page listing all the toll free numbers they have in 64 different countries. Mind you, people oversees can't reach that page.
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Re:WTF??
no no no the _main_ page is blocked. http://www.fvap.gov/ there's another page just for overseas ballots that isn't blocked http://www.overseasvote2004.com/.
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Re:Pentagon in the Democratic Election Space ?
The Pentagon was ordered to create a voting system to replace the current mail-it-in absentee ballot system... because a shit-ton of soldiers in Korea, Germany, Iraq, and all the other myraid places we show up.
It's the Pentagon developing it because the soldiers will be using it. This is not intended to be John Q. Backwoods voting from his AOL.
This is their home page, and here is the here is the law that brought them into being. -
Re:Pentagon in the Democratic Election Space ?
The Pentagon was ordered to create a voting system to replace the current mail-it-in absentee ballot system... because a shit-ton of soldiers in Korea, Germany, Iraq, and all the other myraid places we show up.
It's the Pentagon developing it because the soldiers will be using it. This is not intended to be John Q. Backwoods voting from his AOL.
This is their home page, and here is the here is the law that brought them into being.