Voter Services and Site Usage
OVF has three primary websites: OVF Classic, Youth Vote Overseas and Military Voter Services. OVF also hosts individuals state websites for a total of 17 sites. Overseas American citizens, U.S. State Department employees, and active duty uniformed service members and their accompanying families within and outside of the United States can register to vote from abroad and request their ballots using OVF's suite of voter services.
Youth Vote Overseas (YVO) is a focused outreach program initiative of OVF. The YVO program launched in 2006 and has continued to serve as the only youth-oriented voting site dedicated to young voters overseas.
OVF has two sites tailored to military voters, the Military Voter Services site and their "LITE" site for low graphics/low bandwidth, which assists remote access.
Through OVF's websites voters have access to registration information, a down loadable Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot, state-specific voter information directory (SVID), a local election official directory and a "voter help-desk." Users can submit questions to the voter help-desk, which are then answered within 24 hours. The full suite of voter services includes the following:
- Absentee Voter Registration and Ballot Request: which are customized by state
- Vote-Print-Mail Ballot Service: provides automated write-in ballot with candidate lists
- Election Official Directory Services: a complete election office contact database
- State Voter Information Directory Service: provides dates, deadlines, contact information by state
- Voter Help Desk: instant response system knowledge base and personal help services
- My Voter Account: voters can save their registration data for future use
- Mailing List: voters can opt-in to join the mailing list and receive Voter Alerts
- Express Your Vote: FedEx ballot return shipping - special rates from 80 countries
- Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot: Voters can also interactively complete the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot on the OVF site, a service not available from any other nongovernmental, nonpartisan source.
In 2008, annual discrete site visits reached 4.75 million individual users across 17-hosted OVF sites. 125,000 voters utilized the OVF voter registration (FPCA) and balloting systems. Forty percent of these registrants were young voters between 18 and 29 years old. 29 percent were first time voters. 24 percent were military voters.
Read more about this topic: Overseas Vote Foundation
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