As a nomad, I get my postal mail forwarded to me once a month. This works out well during election season: if I visit my hometown at least once a year, I can stop by City Hall and request absentee ballots for the entire upcoming cycle. My ballots get sent to my permanent mailing address, from which they get forwarded to me, and I then return them via USPS. It doesn’t leave much leeway for delays, but it works.
But this year introduced a new foible: absentee ballots are being distributed while I’m in Costa Rica, and they’re due back before I return stateside. Given the vagaries of international mail, there was no way a physical ballot was going to make the trip from Massachusetts to Central America and back in time. But I wasn’t about to reneg on my civic duty as an American and not vote, either.
Fortunately, our country’s voting system, while in many ways archaic, has an allowance for these scenarios: the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. In effect since 1987 and amended many times since then, the UOCAVA allows United States citizens and military personnel to submit a ballot while traveling and living internationally. All it takes is submitting a request to your local city hall.
That’s what I did for the 2024 Massachusetts state primary, which includes the positions of United States president; the unnecessarily gender-normative State Committee Man and Woman; and Ward Committee. I received my ballot via email within minutes of requesting it at the City Clerk’s office; I had until March 5, the date of the primary, to return it.
The UOCAVA, in an act of foresight, does not mandate or restrict specific technologies, instead leaving it to each state to determine what means of transmission is appropriate for its area and era. Twenty states require ballots to be submitted postally; four have secure websites; and the other 27 (including the District of Columbia) support fax and/or email. My home state of Massachusetts falls into that latter category, enabling me to submit my ballot via email or fax.
I teach various online security courses, and I always discourage my students from sending secure information via email. Although my father hated fax machines — “Anyone walking by could pick up the paper and see it!” — I prefer faxes due to being a direct phone connection to the recipient, as opposed to an email that bounces across multiple Internet servers on its way to its destination. (Physical locations can also be more secure — and certainly more immune to ransomware — than a digital receptacle.) After I completed my ballot, I used my friend Kay Savetz’s website, FaxZero.com, to fax it back for free.
To boil down those steps, I:
- Contacted City Hall;
- Received an email;
- Filled out a form on my computer; and
- Uploaded it to FaxZero.
That’s it! Distance was no barrier: as the crow flies, I am 2,402 miles from where I’m registered to vote; to drive there would be a more circuitous route of 4,249 miles. Yet I still found a legal and reasonable way to vote!
You can, too! I would rather you vote for a candidate I disagree with than not vote at all — it’s the only way to ensure a representative democracy. Whether you’re domestic or international, steps you can take online include:
- Register to vote
- Find your local election office
- Determine your state’s primary election date
- Find your polling place
- Request an absentee ballot
If you wish you were voting from Costa Rica — well, I can’t help you there. But voting at all is still pretty awesome, so do your part!
(Featured image courtesy Element5 Digital on Unsplash)
