Home > News > News Item

FVAP HAS A NEW DIRECTION

UNIFORMITY AND TRANSPARENCY ARE KEY TO PROGRAM'S SUCCESS

Bob Carey, Navy Reservist and military and overseas voter advocate, became the new FVAP Director on July 6, 2009. Carey was previously Executive Director of the National Defense Committee, consultant to the PEW Make Voting Work initiative, a board member of the Overseas Vote Foundation, and principal consultant for Empire-Capitol Strategies. More information on Mr. Carey can be found at www.fvap.gov/global/director.html.

Updated objectives for the voting program are the following:

• Improve Voter Success – Survey data from 2006 indicates that only 26% of votes cast by military voters were successfully counted, as opposed to 85% for the general population. Mr. Carey pledges that "we need to bring the military and overseas voter success rate up to that of the general public’s, something that I hope to achieve by 2012."



• Support Uniform State Laws –There are 55 different sets of laws covering UOCAVA voting procedures. This forces Voting Assistance Officers to work through a 460 page voting guide in order to help their constituents. FVAP supports the Uniform Law Commission efforts to standardize state absentee voting processes, and, hopefully reduce the size of the Voting Assistance Guide from 460 pages to less than 10 pages of straight-forward instructions. To that end, FVAP believes States must adopt three critical legislative initiatives:
  --Provide at least 60 days between ballot mailing date and ballot return date
  --Expand use of electronic transmission of voting materials, particularly e-mail
  --Expand use of the FWAB to all primaries, and to State and Local Elections



• FVAP the Partner – FVAP seeks to be the partner of choice with the States, local election officials and all organizations that advocate for military and overseas citizens voting reform.



• Establish UOCAVA Research Norms and Standards - FVAP will work with stakeholders and other government agencies to establish a UOCAVA data baseline, and to find the statistical uniformity necessary for analyzing military and overseas citizens’ absentee voting.
  --Transparency is Key – Past FVAP reports, methods and data are posted on the FVAP website at www.fvap.gov/reference/reports.html and the program is working to full integration into the President’s DATA.gov initiative. FVAP invites statistical and methodological analysis (especially from the academic and voting advocacy communities), questions, and suggestions on improvements to the data collection and analysis process.
  --Cooperation and Coordination – “Why are multiple agencies asking the same election officials the same questions on different surveys? What a pain for the election officials!” noted Carey. FVAP hopes to join with organizations like the EAC and DODIG to combine surveys and reduce that burden.




ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The FVAP can be contacted via 1-800-438-8683. Citizens may reach the FVAP toll-free from 67 countries using the toll-free numbers listed on the FVAP website, www.fvap.gov/contact/tollfreephone.html. Questions may be referred to the Director, Federal Voting Assistance Program, Department of Defense, 1155 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-1155 or: vote@fvap.ncr.gov. Visit the FVAP website at www.fvap.gov.