Voting

Did you know that military spouses are entitled to vote absentee in elections associated with their home of record?

According to the Federal Voting Assistance Program, "all members of the Uniformed Services, their family members and members of the Merchant Marine and their family members, who are U.S. citizens, may vote absentee in Federal, state and local elections." Please visit their website for more information on the program, which also serves US citizens unaffiliated with the military who reside overseas. The site has information about how to register to vote, how to request an absentee ballot, and an emergency Federal Write In Absentee Ballot available to overseas military members and US citizens overseas who have not received an appropriately applied for absentee ballot in time for an election.

I keep running across people who don't know that military spouses are included in the FVAP.

And today I got a voter registration form in the mail from the Voter Participation Center "informing" me: "If you are no longer residing at [insert my home of record address here] state law requires you to update your voter registration records." Gah. The Voter Participation Center is a "get out the vote" effort affiliated with Women's Voices. Women Vote, which is, "a nonpartisan organization that seeks to mobilize all unmarried women to register to vote and to go to the polls on Election Day." Their president claims that the organization has a powerful predictive model that allows them to target unmarried women. I'm happily married. I've voted faithfully at every opportunity since turning 18. Though I do confess to abstaining on certain ballot measures on occasion. I don't care for "get out the vote efforts." If someone can't manage the effort of registering to vote without hand-holding, I'd rather they just continue on disenfranchising themselves. And I really don't care for "nonpartisan" organizations that target specific populations whom they acknowledge are more likely to vote in favor of certain policies: "In contrast to married women, Gardner says, unmarried women are largely driven by economic issues when it comes to their politics." (Katrina Vanden Heuvel; The Nation)

Also on my mind:

My home of record is in Washington State, which uses a caucus system for Presidential primaries. While the Democratic party will only use caucus results to determine delegates, the Republicans will use primary results to allocate 51% of delegates. As an absentee voter, I have no way of attending the caucus at the precinct my home of record is in. At least I'm a Republican so my vote in the primary counts for something. Unfortunately, with Washington's late date for the primary, my first (Duncan Hunter) and second (Mitt Romney) choice candidates have both left the race already. But they are both on my ballot because my county has moved to a 100% vote by mail program and all the ballots were mailed several weeks ago. What kind of an impact will that have on the results? Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't expect every voter to be up to date on who is still in the running.