Jessica Kirby

In 2014, the Department of Defense’s Federal Voting Assistance Program, FVAP, found that only an estimated 4% of overseas American citizens were participating in voting. David Beirne, Director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, says that employers of overseas Americans can help further the FVAP mission in ensuring their overseas employees are made aware of the benefits when utilizing FVAP’s resources to register and request an absentee ballot.

The Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) has linked up with Syracuse University to examine absentee voting challenges faced by active duty servicemembers every election cycle. They have developed a survey hoping to improve the absentee-voting process.

West Virginia is on the verge of leading the nation as they begin testing a mobile application for military voting. Secretary of State Mac Warner announced last week that they have begun a trial for a secure military mobile voting option that will be used for their May 8^th primary election. Two counties, Harrison and Monongalia, will be the testing ground for registered, qualified military voters to cast their ballots via a mobile app that uses blockchain technology.

On Tuesday, March 20^th, voters in the state of Illinois went to the polls to cast their ballots in the nation’s second primary election of the year. Illinois was the lone state in the 2016 election known to have its election systems breached in a hacking effort that penetrated the state’s voter registration data. While no actual voting machines or vote tallying were altered, hacking of voter rolls can cause just as much damage. “I think it’s only a matter of time before we suffer a devastating attack on our election systems unless our federal and state governments act quickly,” says J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan.