well good morning and welcome to the committee on house administration subcommittee on elections are hearing on military overseas voting the obstacles and possible  solutions this hearing is going to provide an opportunity for the committee to learn about the outreach efforts of the federal voting since program the hurdles that military and overseas voters encounter when they are trying to vote from abroad and possible policy recommendations to address these obstacles in a letter to congress in march of one nine hundred fifty two president truman wrote and i quote the men and women who are serving their country and in many cases risking their lives deserve above all others the exercise in the right to vote unfortunately nearly sixty years later we're still struggling with the issue of military and overseas registration and voting members of the military and u citizens who live abroad are eligible to register and vote under the uniformed and overseas citizen absentee voting habits of one thousand nine hundred six despite you are covered it is clear that our military and overseas voters are not able cover coupled with reports from democrats abroad that roughly one in five overseas voters were unable to return voted ballots on time is cause for great concern the obstacles to having these ballots counted are varied but the most common problems are the delivery of election materials to how voters burdensome absentee ballot requirements and varying state requirements and deadlines while individual states are attempting to address these issues by allowing for electronic transmission of blank ballots or allowing ballots to be returned via fax or e mail as well as extending registration deadlines more needs to be done at the federal level to address the issue you okada has produced major improvements but more effort and resources are needed to ensure the nation's military and overseas citizens can successfully exercise their right to participate in the american electoral process in closing i want to acknowledge as chairman brady who along with the committee ranking many members mr longer and are dedicated to removing these obstacles and ensuring that military and overseas voters can successfully cast their ballots and i hope that this hearing is going to be a material important step forward in making the situation better with that i would recognize the ranking member of the subcommittee mr mccarthy opening statement he may have thank you madam chair i appreciate you having today's hearing and knowing in our last congress we had a hearing as well knowing that the voting procedures continue to fail thousands of military personnel overseas have an opening statement that i submit for the record there but i just like to say that this is gone on too long and people have risked their lives for our liberties and we  something about that record after record as shown the failure of the process of getting these ballots to the military men and women and actually getting it back and having their vote counted i would like to ask the chair if she would if we could work together i know there is a new c r s report out that senator schumer has and hasn't shared with anybody else but it goes along about the military voting in the failure process i'd like to see if we could to get a copy of that as  well to work together to make sure we solve this problem and i thank you for the hearing thank you and without objection your full statement will be made part of the record and the opening statements of other members by without objection will also be made part of the record i like to move now to the panel before us and to get their testimony and then we'll have an opportunity to ask questions for we have missed gail mcginn and this mcginn serves as the acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness and that oversees the federal voting assistance program prior to her appointment as deputy undersecretary in november of two thousand and two ms mcginn was principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for force management policy and principal director for personnel support families and education she received a bachelor of arts in psychology from william smith college and her master's degree in education from boston university next we have captain partri garcia captain garcia serves as the officer in charge of the seventy eight aerospace medicine squadron the public health flight at robins air force base in georgia and january of two thousand and eight captain garcia was appointed the robins insulation voting assistance officer during the two thousand and eight election captain garcia directed sixty five unit voting assurance officers who served nearly four thousand military personnel and their dependen voter registration and absentee voting questions we thank you captain garcia for being here today and look forward to your testimony next we have mr roky suliman is just two women currently serves as the general registrar for fairfax county virginia prior to his appointment in two thousand and eight he was the deputy director of the board of elections and from the county ohio he is a certified election registration administrator through the professional education program certification board at all been university in alabama and finally we have ms jesse duffy who is a retired gunnery sergeant in the united states marine corps she has served on active duty in the marine corps for twenty years following her service in the stuff now acts as a volunteer and spokesperson for military voting rights usa a national network dedicated to ensuring that military voters have their votes cast and counted and we thank you miss for being here today we have procedure here where each the  statement of each of you will be made part of our official record we ask that your oral testimony consume about five minutes and at the conclusion of all of your statements we will have an opportunity to ask questions that little machine in the middle of the table is a is a warning light when the when the yellow light goes on it means actually have a minute to go in your five minutes when the red light goes on it means you've always catches people by surprise at the whole five minutes is gone i certainly won't cut you off in the middle of the sentence but we did ask that you conclude when the light goes on so that everybody can be heard so if we could begin with you miss me again thank you madam chair ranking member harper and distinguished members of the  subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to testify about the obstacles service members and overseas voters may face in exercising their right to vote and the initiatives we've undertaken to solve those problems i'm joined at the table here today by mr tom bush mr bush is the acting director of the federal voting assistance program and he can help any answer any detailed questions you may have in addition to me the department is dedicated to making the absentee voting process easier and more straightforward time and distance mobility and varying state requirements are barriers that make the absentee voting process difficult for service members their families and u s citizens who live outside the united states first is the obstacle of time and distance the process to register to vote request an absentee ballot and return the marked ballot for you acaba voters can be much more daunting than for voters who live in the same location as by the vote while there have been extraordinary efforts to expedite the movement of voting materials through the postal system time and distance create challenges particularly in areas where mail service is minimal intermittent or nonexistent piecework peace corps workers submariners forward deployed service members to name if you may be most effective and important solution to the time and distance problem is leveraging technology technology can significantly reduce the time constraints and eliminate the distance problem for most fuel convoy of voters for the two thousand and ten elections the federal voting assistance program is pursuing the next generation of electronic tools to assist these voters we call this initiative the automated rig register request and receive ballot process or our three our three will expand on our previous tools by adding an online capability to complete the federal write in absentee ballot and expand and enhance the ability of election officials to transmit blank ballots unlike our previous initiatives this system will be owned and operated by d o d and hosted t facilities does mitigating potential threats to personal privacy data and permitting easy refinements and expansion in the future the next obstacle is mobility military and overseas voters are a dynamic group where they are located today may not be where they will be located for the next election we know where military members are assigned and reside therefore it is easier to encourage them to notify their state election official of their current address to facilitate this  military service reports that when military members arrive at a new duty station they are provided with a voter registration card so they can notify their state election official of their new address further we have forged and maintained valued partnerships with state and local election officials who carry out the elections the united states postal service the military postal service agency the department of state the department of justice other federal agencies and overseas citizen organizations and advocacy groups the federal voting assistance program uses a network of voting assistance officers both from the military and the department of state we have an extensive training program to here to prepare voting assistant officers to perform their duties you're shortly he from an actual voting assistance officer who can describe her work finally and most importantly is the challenge of varying state requirements the fifty five states and territories administer their elections differently this means that registration procedures ballot distribution procedures voted ballot return regulations and deadlines are determined by a large number of independent jurisdictions each jurisdiction with its unique requirements we work with the states to promote passage of legislation that is uniform among all states for you a comma citizens the legislative initiatives we encourage states and territories to enact including providing at least forty five days between valid mailing dates and the date ballots are d giving chief state election officials the authority to alter election procedures in emergency situations providing a state write in absentee ballots to be sent out ninety to one hundred eighty days before all elections and expanding the use of electronic transmission alternatives for voting materials there have been successes with forty seven states adapting one or more of these initiatives in conclusion we know that each to aqaba voter has a unique set of circumstances and that one solution is not right for everyone providing them with as many alternatives as possible to register to vote request a ballot and return the ballot will help each voter find the solution that works best for him or her i would like to thank the committee for your continued support of our servicemembers their families and our overseas citizens and all you have done to make it easier for them to vote look forward to answering your question thank you thank you very much captain garcia we'd love to hear from you good morning chairwoman lofgren ranking member mccarthy and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the robins air force base voting assistance program i was appointed as the robinson still ation voting assistant officer and january two thousand and eight the robinson outing assistance program supports the voting needs of the warner robins air logistics center the seventy eighth air base wing and over thirty associate units representing six major commands i direct the activities of the robins boating assistance program committee and sixty five unit voting assisting councillors who have served over four thousand military members and their dependents with voter registration and absentee voting question before i proceed i would like to emphasize that i can only speak to our voting assistance program at robins air force base in georgia our responsibilities at the base level are to educate and assist military members and their dependents on how to register to vote and how to actually cast their vote we are mandated not to pressure any individual to register or vote nor true discourage such action our position is voting counters has no authority to provide any legal advise concerning change of residency laws nor to resolve conflicts between members and their local registration or voting officials military members with this type of problems are referred the local legal office or to the voting assistance program hotline according to establish guidance unit commanders appoint a minimum of one unit voting assistant councillor peron hundred unit members for a total of sixty five councillors for robins air force base this unit counters were appointed in writing and were required to complete their initial voting councilor training by means of the federal voting assistance program website online workshop in july two thousand and eight we also held an informational meeting to enhance the on line training a detailed discussion was held concerning their requirements responsibilities and different methods that could be a ploy to accomplish those requirements numerous resource mysterious were distributed to counselors including standardized briefings that could be used  commanders called or emailed directly to their unit members between august and september the unit counselors educated the robins air force base populace on the voting assistance program the federal voting postcard voter registration deadlines and how to vote absentee we focused our education all efforts more heavily during air force motor week and air force absentee voter week in september and october respectively this included articles in the base newspaper posters reminders on the base electronic billboards and various other high visibility items early voting in georgia for locally registered members was highly publicized in the air force absentee voter we cannot tobar our program is not limited to the election season other instructional activities provided by the robins voting assistance program include monthly briefings used to introduce and explain the purpose of the voting assistance program to first term airmen and base newcomers static voting assistant displays with motivational posters election dates federal postcard applications and informational pamphlets are kept stocked and current at the base library military personnel office and at the base exchange one last activity i would like to discuss is voting system services provided to our deployers prior to deploying robins air force base members are required to attend a pre deployment they are there in despair we distribute the robins loading assistance program informational trifold our hope is that discipline years will reference this pamphlet and know where to get help with voting questions while deployed the biggest challenges faced by the robins voting assistance program are primarily caused by factors outside of our control the voter registration process is not standardized from state to state not even county to county and some states this lack of consistency makes learning how to properly fill out the federal voting postcard very confusing and difficult this federal voting postcards are primarily filled out by hand sometimes filled out by hand and therefore at times can be difficult to read talking to different air minute robins i learned that sometimes  illegibility factor caused the postcards to be returned to the member by the postal service in at least one instance the member report it information was in put incorrectly by a registration clerk which led to disqualification questions when a member went had passed it was too late to register or send in their absentee ballot even though their home state had later deadline as an american military voter i would personally like to express my gratitude to all the members of this committee for your concern and your assistance in our effort to  be counted i look forward to answering your questions concerning the robins air force base voting assistance program very very much mr sulu would like to hear from you good morning madam chairman distinguished members of the committee military and overseas voters encounter significant obstacles when it comes to exercising their right to vote the distance a ballot must travel in the short time frame in which it has to travel creates problems that the average american voter does not face i have great sympathy for these absentee voters the first vote i ever cast was an absentee ballot navy boot camp although as medically discharged soon afterwards the experience of the definite impression about the importance of absentee and military voting changes have been made to make it easier for military overseas voting citizens to enjoy their franchise but given today's technology these changes are not enough to new york miami or san francisco these changes help separate time sensitive absentee mail from the regular flood of mail but the u p s process is daily on a on a daily basis however many election officials do not know these extra tools are available to them education of election officials across the country may be needed to help alleviate this problem in fairfax county my office issued a thousand six hundred twenty three you will call the ballots during the nov two thousand and eight general election out of those eight thousand six hundred twenty three ballots seven thousand three hundred thirty two are returned a rate of eighty five percent significant rate reason for the high rate of return of our overseas ballots has to be attributed to the fact that you know allows ballots to be emailed to you acaba voters in november of two thousand and eight three thousand four hundred eighty three of our ballots were sent via e mail by utilizing e mail we dramatically balloting to include any military voter in the united states as well as overseas i believe this is the first step towards allowing election officials to email a ballot to anyone outside the borders of the commonwealth will welcome that advancement a natural extension of this benefit would be to allow voters to return their vote to an office of elections electronically currently every junior voter must print their email ballot fill it out and return it via the mail or commercial delivery service this may be problematic for military voters in a war zone or civilians or remote areas of the world allowing electronic transmission of a ballot to an office of election will be of great help to our overseas voters virginia faced a significant problem regarding the federal right an absentee ballot state law required an address for a witness if the f was used simultaneously as an application from witness and as an application was and only under the specific requirement was the only absentee ballot in virginia that required this extra information from a witness only after a late opinion by the attorney general was that the statute was in conflict with federal law where we able to accept the ballots without that information this is an example where state may put extra barriers to you a comma voters although the intention of these laws may be noble the fact remains that these laws are correct significant barriers to many citizens for participating in our most basic right the time in which a ballot is available also creates a problem for overseas voters to timely receive a paper ballot the code of virginia requires offices of elections to have about at least forty five days prior to any november general election thirty days prior to any general special or primary election or as soon after the deadline as possible in the case of a special election when the deadline is unavailable to be met virginia's fortune off to have the time available live or the ballots in a general election states that have made september primaries may not have that luxury for november general election the time it takes to certify the election then create and print paper bal may push jurisdiction well into the thirty days prior to an election that is nothing not enough time to process send in return a paper ballot for a new acaba voter in fairfax county my office will have held five elections the first six months of this year three of which were special elections called with a short amount of lead time special elections provide the best example the drastic need to improve our ability to deliver bad for you have you a couple voters for a february special election my office issued five thousand one hundred eighteen absentee ballots three thousand three hundred fifty two of those ballots where you acaba voters idea was occurring we assume that some ballots were just deleted or thrown away but every week we still receive one or two ballots from an overseas voter for one of our elections we received recently received a ballot for the november general election we have no idea why these ballots take so long to arrive to our office but they do i thank you  mccarthy and members of the committee thank you for letting me testify today i served in the united states marine corps for twenty years and retired rather recently and while i was on active duty i will express that i was stationed overseas on four separate tours in okinawa japan during this time overseas is very very difficult the marine corps is a very very unique force it's an expeditionary force it essentially is not in contact with a lot of the united states during the times that they are overseas many civilians may find it very hard to grasp  lack of capability to stay in contact there is no blackberry there is no i phone even if the technology is with you it's doesn't officially work overseas so you are very limited you do not have internet access as many people seem to assume that the technology will be a quick solution often while you are in the field you aren't out there in a nine to five workday you are out there for weeks you are out there for months and often getting access to any type of internet usage is not possible for you  access to voting information during my time while on active duty was very very limited i did not get approached but one time while on active duty by a voting officer to get registered to vote and unfortunately i wasn't even stationed overseas i was at camp pendleton california military members are often disenfranchised for several reasons the reality is that there isn't the information accessible to them while they're on for deployment even often when they are in a  normal basis that you would expect to see more support the in april fifteenth is tax day two months prior to that your taxes being due to out every military installation for two months they help you get rid of they help you get your taxes done and then there's complaint campaign where military members are able to volunteer to donate money guess what they provide mandatory briefings for everybody so that they can donate to see if the whether they choose to or not is up to them but yet there aren't mandatory briefings on registration processes and the teams that are available are so limited that you don't have readily readily access to information available well the most important thing that can happen now for military members to get their vote counted and i'm talking about the immediate near future not long term would be an express mail delivery service and the reason that i feel that this is so important is right now the technology isn't available to the military we do have a unique opportunity as military members with the the cat card as your military id card the military i d card allows you to go into any computer system and it automatically identifies who you are for the future it would be incredible that a military member can have a voting station set up wherever they are at slide their car their ballot is signed into wherever that their home record is and they get their absentee ballot and they are able to fill it out and then they can express mail it back but right now we don't have that system available so there's a lot of ideas out there that we need the training and we need the opportunity for military members to actively register but in order to get those ballots back on time is probably the most critical question right now a delivery time of four days means that military ballots can be cast on a friday afternoon a military man or woman overseas can say i'm casting about today is going to be counted by tuesday that is an incredible feeling when you're in the military to cast your ballot thirty days out and not really know how to turn the election is going to go is very disturbing thought for many of us on active duty and overseas military voter can judge candidates on the full period of the election as we all know things do pop up right before election time a delivery time a four days with express mail not three weeks will increase turnout because interest in elections is highest near the end of the election you know to force the military member to get actively aggressive involved and there really hasn't been a lot of the interest going until that last few weeks is very difficult for them also express ballots which can often honestly force the military member to lose the integrity of their ballot you don't know who will see that facts you don't know who will witness it military men often doesn't have a postmark this is another thing a lot of people don't recognise m p s does not necessarily postmark your mail so if we say we can accept it three weeks after how do we know that it was cast before the election we don't so it's critical with express mail you are able to see a postmark on that from four days three four days over three weeks of delivery is a critical element for military people an express mail delivery time of four days not three weeks would ensure far fewer military voters would be disenfranchised and ballots arriving late express mail would maintain t secrecy of the ballot ensure public confidence which public does not have a lot of confidence in some of the technology right now and military voters will have their ballots counted i respectfully appreciate that opportunity testified this morning and i am open for  your questions at this time thank you very much for your testimony and thanks to all the witnesses for all of your testimony and statements now is the time when we can follow up with our questions and i would turn first to the remember the issue about military absentee ballots in your jurisdiction believe that you had to have a witness even though if you voted absentee and you live there you did not have to have a witness and you brought that up in your testimony was there any other jurisdiction in virginia to interpret it the same way that you guys did there were several jurisdictions in virginia that chose to ignore the law that required it interpreted the same way that you did know and they date they interpreted the law correctly and the secretary of state board of elections  interpreted the law that way but they were choosing to ignore the law in fairfax and we felt you know we don't have the ability to ignore the law we didn't like a lot we brought a lot of our bodies attention before the election so this was going to be significant problem and only  by an attorney general's opinion saying that the law was in conflict but we will to accept those ballots did you go back and count the ballots all of those ballots were counted that is correct so in this one thank you very test my father very intriguing especially from one for your service for twenty years for all of the services you provided but you made some very interesting to me i mean we look at how do we solve the system today in the best manner that we can and in the future even  improve some of the testimony talked about the internet and stuff and real life experience that you gave that you don't have the option for that and you talked about express mail which i had to put a bill in the does the express mail in the four day but when we talk about this issue we talk about military voting and we talk about overseas voting and it's always gets lumped together but in your testimony you brought a lot of attention to me the different hardships if you're in the military could be much different than if you're just a citizen overseas and if you could explain maybe elaborate a little more the difference and should they be treated different because right now it doesn't seem that they're being treated differently military members are sent overseas not necessarily at the choice they were sent the federal government and they will ensure that they serve their duty over there they are going to be subjected to usually long long periods away from their families they are often enduring circumstances in the field operations that  do not offer facilities that most people would experience who are civilians overseas the hardships are very very very difficult and i'm not even talking about combat operations keep in mind i served in field operations that were not combat related we trained explicitly for combat and we duplicated comeback conditions but i wasn't in a combat situation my mail was delayed constantly i mean i remember getting vacation postcards after mother got home a month later earlier so that was quite interesting  but those are maybe humorous examples but when you're talking about your election military members do not have the choices that a lot of their civilian counterparts have you're talking seven day work weeks often and sometimes you go to sleep literally to get right back up and are mandatory and they provide what you had no mandatory when it came to voting assistance within their i wouldn't say that the tax tax office is that they said about mandatory what they do though is about two to three months prior to your taxes being do they set up offices through out the base to assist people with taxes and the teams are trained not just one officer you're trained on basically submitting state and federal taxes now those tax laws get pretty complicated i would assume too so obviously voting laws can be something that they can be trained in and i think there should be facilities that are easily accessible for military members to to acquire not only when they come onto base do they get registered with that cat card the cat card is a guaranteed signature that this is a real person they can utilize that but also the federal absentee write in ballot that's been around since one thousand nine hundred six i never heard of it while i was on active duty not once one of the members of my one of my friends who served in iraq on a third tour told me that he had not received his absentee ballot on time he had to pull himself out of the field found the internet found a federal write in ballot and never had heard of it himself and got his ballot cast on time now with express mail you can get the federal write in ballot meldon or you can get your  absentee ballot write in and i mean two thousand times right around the corner i think we've got to have a quick solution and then we can work on some of these technology issues so they're proficient and good for the rest the population thing when you said express mail you talked about they don't even postmark your mail so we would know that would give them a storm in the difficulty of knowing when it was mailed or if you could count in time when the election is over so one would put the burden upon you currently the way system is but if you had a tracking system that would express mail you could track each ballot so you would know where it was that where it was coming from would you find that as something to be helpful in your absolutely military members often feel like they're going into a big abyss when they cast that ballot they don't know that it even gets there the reality is with express mail we're going to go from three weeks to four days and it sounds like there's times where it's been longer than three weeks sometimes four or five weeks that is an undue burden on a military member to ensure that they get that ballot in the mail box on time express mail can happen i've seen many things happen in the military when they're told to do it they do it and they can get those express mail forms filled out friday and that's counted on tuesday and everything's on time and states don't have to modify their laws now gentlemen so i'm as expired i would turn to the generally from california ms davis for her questions thank you madam and chair and thank you all for being here and and for your service as well i'm glad that my colleague brought up the tracking system because we're working together on a bill that would allow voters overseas military voters of course to do this there are several states that already have it and even in our area in san diego there  were ninety eight thousand voters who checked our online system to see where their ballots were so we think that's very very valuable and you mentioned the stuff that would be helpful i mean to see if i could ask others as well if this would make a difference one of the things that was mentioned is that you can always have x access to the internet but but still the tracking would be helpful and would that be it where you can always go eventually you will have access to the internet so it's not something that eventually you can go back and see that you're but with count it and i'm not saying all military is is an able to use the internet but even if you can go back a week after you come out of the field my vote counted yeah could could could the rest of you respond in terms of the ability of voters to track their ballot and helpful that would be i think it would be very helpful i think you're back to the situation where those state street have different rules about electronic transmission and what they pass back and forth and so you're back to struggling with how do you get states to do that as a whole and i think that ms duffy raises an interesting point and one of the things that we talk about which is that nobody situation is the same and some people need to send their ballots and some people can fax their ballot and in some cases some people can actually transmit their ballot electronically and so we need to cover all of those bases somehow which the challenge of the program but that's what would be my sense it would be good to be able to track it i think even in taking about that a tracking system and being able to do it online dol so through an eight hundred number would be included in that legislation thank you ma'am i think would be very satisfying for military members to know that their vote is counting and it doesn't get lost in the abyss the only thing i would like to add is we're only talking about our overseas but ourselves still a lot of military members here in the states who feel like their vote doesn't count so the only thing i would ask i don't i don't know the specifics of the legislation if it's also going to include absentee ballots within the us not just our overseas members yes absolutely that's the whole idea yeah thank you country count countrywide and i guess  phone calls away from our office during the last thirty days of an election to help us prepare for everything else that we have to do is all is a welcome advancement the the tracking for express mail would also be a significant help to us if we can determine when a ballot was put into the mail in the first place that we we don't have to worry about you know attempting to check postmarks in ohio where my previous jurisdiction we were able to accept absentee ballots up to ten days after the election as long as they were postmarked and we also received a directive from the secretary of state that if we could not determine a postmark if there was not a postmark we had to assume that it was mailed prior to the election so we at least open up a window to lob a little bit more ballots to be accepted in virginia unfortunately all absentee ballots have to be received by my office by the close of polls on election day that significant impediment to collecting overseas ballots i would welcome a standard uniform rule  or any overseas ballot would be accepted within a tad ten day or a five day window whatever that windows is selected to be but at least a window after the election so that we can get a little bit more these ballots counted not only can i just we actually experience with tracking you here so if i could just turn to my colleague mr bush for a minute but i think it's important to note for the two thousand eight hundred she we did work with the united states postal service here and not in every every region but we were a but we did use a tracking system where they had the technology they were in the process of doing that so they were they were putting a barcode on the ballots so we could track them coming back we also used to express mail the last week of the election  back working with the postal service and want to comment was made is that the military postal service doesn't postmark material in fact the postal service for balloting material they were issue postmarks they could postmark every ballot so we could identify and track when it was received in the disposed thank you it can you all think of any reason why we shouldn't do that it sounded pretty unanimous to me ok thank you very much  i actually have a few other questions if there's another round but otherwise i want to thank you all right gentleman from mississippi mr harper thank you for being here today it's it's a great concern that we had to make sure that men and women in the military that their votes  counted do any of you think that the those that are in uniform over overseas should be treated differently than just civilians who are overseas in the process i  do and and why do you think they should be treated because of the conditions that they have to endure that most of your civilians who choose to be overseas are not and during military members are sent there by the federal government the federal government should be responsible for ensuring that their vote is counted and the conditions that they're under do not allow that normally so extra attention and extra effort to make sure that those are properly care absolutely there in service of their country sir and i know they seem to always be lumped together in these requirements mcginn i'd love to have your views on that i expect that yes maybe i'm thinking of the state department now specifically our industry but i suspect that our military members are probably tend to be younger  may be away from home for the first time and so therefore i think we need to be very assertive in getting the word out to them as ms dubstep said we try to use every possible way to get the word out to people about  voting our senior leaders have commented you know they go into our deployed areas and everywhere they look as election approaches there are banners and posters and it's hard to not see them but i think that the fact that they're younger they don't have as much experience military do they not they would they would have that information somewhere within their their their files yes whether they were from texas or whatever state would that be correct if i can say yes or  we know what their home of record is we know where they're currently stationed then that may be different than where they registered about so right now i'm in fact i'm exploring with our privacy act folks if there is a way that we can get there the place where they're registered to vote there are some concerns i've got to work through that that that would be helpful dan if we could target where the register to vote because you know in our business that's what really matters and i know we're talking about you know a meeting with the people but if you had that in the system where there declared voter residency was and then there was a change of duty is that something that you could envision that the d o d could notify the end of a new or a change of address for them for for that purpose what we could do when we have some of the changes that's part of the privacy concern is that is what we share with the state but it if we had that information we could push information to back particular member just like we have somebody checks in a new duty station but we could put that information to the members reminding them that they need to register to vote they need to change their location when they when they do change that if i could just point out one thing yesterday talking about that have seen military and civilian stationed overseas there is a difference i think but you have to also think of people like peace corps workers who are make who maybe enrollment remote locations they may have the same sort of hardships that some military members experience so we have to sort of you can't just i think separate the two into two distinct groups we have to think holistically and extra effort on the military in those remote location clearly is an area that we need to focus on well certainly we appreciate what those in the peace corps do but it's a little different for those that are in uniform who put their life on the line in combat situations any problem giving them  preferential treatment to make sure that we don't miss those opportunities as well oh no sir i'm not saying we should not make every effort to keep our military informed and help them in the voting process  c if i could ask you is there any voter registration card or information in when somebody comes to your base it gets information that perhaps could be used to help them in that process yes or as i mentioned in my statement when people come  we continue our continuous education instruction we have monthly briefings for first term airmen and new comers to the base and anybody who comes into the base will have to go to either one of those venues at that point we do have a brief and our counselors are trained to help them actually fill out their federal voting assistance program also as i mentioned we have the static this place that are located at the m p after the b x and the library so i see are walking by you can see the large displays and if you have any questions the pampas can direct you to your i think this is been very helpful and and as i think about the testimony here today it strikes me that we need to do everything not choose among alternatives for example as as mr bush  said we've got people who are in remote areas in the peace corps in the cia in the military i mean in in the state department usa id who have different constraints and then we have people you know americans who are you know in the state department but they're in london you know so that's i mean and the the the challenges are going to be different so i think that the use of technology the use a priority mail i mean there's a these are all good things and whatever we do we need to make sure that they're all approach so that we can serve everybody in terms of the military i mean we've got it two years ago we had nearly forty six thousand of our american military were non citizens and so we need to make sure i like the military i d card but not everybody with a military id card is eligible to vote because they're not an american citizen so we can use that but there needs to be another level of assurance on that i'm interested mr suleman on the internet issue because for some voters abroad or even military within the united states the for example new york new york has a september primary you know that's i guess that's up to them but it's it makes it very difficult to mail out it's almost impossible to mail out of a ballot to a rock and get it back with the september ballot so the internet example i think is very attractive to be and certainly the use of the internet has exploded even since you were in the military two thousand and four a friend of mine is was just deployed to iraq he has a blog so i mean it's really the internet is exploding what kind of  security do you have that's the question we all what about the security if we use the internet i always think i feel secure enough when i do my banking online but what would you recommend as somebody who i know worries about the integrity of the system  the security of a of an internet email ballot to me would be this almost the same as the security as long as it's on a secure server the same as security for regular absentee ballot there is some thought that people lose the secrecy of the ballot when they would potentially email about the same thing exists when you submit any sort of absentee ballot because an election official has to separate that ballot from that identification number up and at that particular moment there is the potential to identify a vote to a voter i do believe that we should start looking for more e mail and internet solutions i mean you said about your banking i mean i pay all my utility bills online i buy concert tickets online i buy pizza online i do my banking on line i really don't see why we cannot afford people the ability to both you know receive and submit a ballot online there are secure methods to to transmit material over the internet and we do it all the time and i really don't see why we can't do that for our ballots for overseas citizens this begin what do you think about the internet was the constraints that  think it is a very valuable option we have deployed in iraq right now internet cafes for the troops who are over there so that they have access to internet sites and what we're trying to do with  our next step in technology is to create a secure environment and to expand the use of the internet for receiving a ballot maybe someday submitting a valid i think as we said before it's an option that's very important some day we'll probably all do it of course there are security issues involved and we are waiting on some advice from the election assistance committee and nist on what we would need to do to create a secure internet environment for voting  have been we've had several initiatives in that way and i think it's important for us to continue to pursue well i'll just say i know that next this is the expert on all these technologies were blessed in the united states to have that  government entity that is so nerdy and so on top of this stuff so we'll look to them for good advice but i think that this is been an important first step i mean it's obviously we want to make sure that the men and women who are american citizens have every chance and to vote and to know that they have the right to vote but also you know our peace corps and every everybody's got a right to vote has that chance to go ahead and exercise that franchise so i think this has been enormously helpful we will be old holding open this hearing for five legislative days to allow for additional questions and if we do have them we will forward them to you and ask that testimony to be related and i would ask unanimous consent that the following documents be made part of the official record a statement from democrats abroad a statement from the uniform walk a mission  statement by congressman rush holt and without objection those state this will be made part of the record and we will now be in adjournment with tremendous thanks to you for your wonderful testimony and helping us move forward on this enormously important issue