Florida, the hotly contested key to this year's election, is an example. Attempts to reach officials at the Florida State Election Commission Office on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to find out how many of these servicemembers voted absentee in this election have been unsuccessful. Once the postcard applications are filled out and mailed, voters receive an absentee ballot that they must fill out and return. In the cases in which absentee ballots don't arrive in time for voters to fill them out and get them back to state election officials, current law provides for a federal write-in ballot, which can be used only when a regular ballot has been requested in a timely manner and has failed to arrive. In most states, absentee voters can cast ballots only in federal elections for president, the Senate and House, although a few allow the federal write-in ballot to be used for absentee voting in local elections as well.
Every state has different requirements for registration and absentee voting.
Printed copies of the guide also are available from military voting assistance officers on every U.S. installation. In recent years, the FVAP has been working hard to explore electronic alternatives to make the ways make the absentee voting process easier. In the early to mid-1990s, officials were able to get almost all the states to agree to allowing the Federal Post Card Application to be requested and sent in by fax. More recently, the office has been looking at ways to use the Internet in the voting process. In the 1996 election, for example, an estimated 100,000 to 130,000 military absentee voters did not get to cast ballots because they didn't request, receive, or return them in time to be counted.