Members of the uniformed services and American citizens residing abroad face unique voter registration challenges when voting as overseas absentee voters. They might not receive their ballots in time or their voted ballots might not arrive until after the deadline set by their local election officials, in which case their votes may
not be counted. As a result, their right to vote is far too often compromised. Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) provides proven tools and services to overseas and uniformed services voters and local election officials, which have effectively facilitated the franchise of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military and overseas voters.

OVF’s mission is to increase the participation of eligible uniformed service and overseas voters in U.S. federal elections. With that goal in mind, OVF has developed online tools and services to provide information to voters and assist them to register and request ballots. The Pew Charitable Trusts has provided grant support through its “Make Voting Work” initiative to develop OVF’s new 2008 suite of voter services. OVF now provides state-of-the art, interactive web applications for the formerly manual and error-prone process of overseas and military voter registration. Automation of this process lowers costs and offers increased access to voters. In addition, OVF offers information services that cover the key state requirements for registration dates and deadlines, as well as a comprehensive online directory of contact information for the thousands of local election officials in the United States.

With the OVF web application, voters don’t need coaching through the form completion process; forms arrive with legible and complete information; emails are captured for easier contact between local election officials; and, perhaps most importantly, voters love it!

Partners with OVF

In partnership with the JEHT Foundation, OVF is taking an innovative step in expanding the reach of its technology by allowing election officials, citizen groups and corporations to offer OVF-hosted systems. The entire OVF software suite is offered to interested organizations (states, corporations and any other group) with their own customized design. From the voter’s perspective, the services are provided by the organization, while OVF provides design, development, support, hostingand reporting. Any organization can provide highquality overseas and military voter services at a fraction of the cost of developing such a system on their own.

OVF’s hosted system partnerships represent a significant advancement in voter outreach for the organizations that chose to use the technology to improve services to their overseas citizens.

Ohio

The state of Ohio created a site in partnership with OVF, ohio.overseasvotefoundation.org, to enhance voter services to Ohio citizens abroad.

“There is no other organization providing these services nationally, and we are proud to collaborate with OVF to serve all of our UOCAVA (Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act) constituents,” said Ohio State Secretary Jennifer Brunner. “We expect to see a jump in participation in 2008.”

Minnesota

Minnesota has also created a new voter services site at minnesota.overseasvotefoundation.org. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie stated:

“We are looking forward to bringing a vastly increased number of registrations in from overseas citizen and active-duty military voters in 2008. Our new Minnesota voter services site will facilitate voting for members of the Minnesota National Guard, many of whom will be first-time military voters this year.”

Alabama

Beth Chapman, Alabama Secretary of State, who in the near term will be launching an Alabamaspecific site at Overseasfoundation.org said:

“The OVF hosted system program is an innovative program in the elections arena for boosting UOCAVA voter participation. We are excited to be at the forefront with this technology and able to offer quality voter services to Alabama’s military and overseas voters.”

With an OVF hosted system, each organization can run a voter help desk to manage support for their voters or can defer to OVF for help-desk support. This reduces the training and support burden on staff members. A reporting dashboard provides real-time data regarding voter registrations occurring on each hosted site. All that is required is a link from the organization’s homepage to the OVF hosted system page, and voters can begin getting information or registering.

OVF is the first and only private organization that can offer a full-service, ready-to-customize overseas and military voter registration system and accompanying services to help every organization reach its goals of boosting voter participation and providing quality service.

About Overseas Vote Foundation

Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan charitable organization, was founded in 2005 to assist uniformed and overseas American citizens in registering to vote in federal elections and is a leader in online voter services for UOCAVA voters.

Visit OVF on the web at overseasvotefoundation.org

Contact: Overseas Vote Foundation
Tel: +1 202-470-2480
Fax: +1 202-318-0653