National Absentee Ballot Guide

by Amy Ephron

Make your vote count!

To assist you we have put together a handy tool to help you get your Absentee Ballot. Just choose your state below:

I left my son Ethan at George Washington University last week in Washington, D.C. As I was leaving our nation’s capital, I had a revelation. He was going to be three thousand miles away from his polling place and had no clue how to apply for an absentee ballot! And neither did any of his roommates.

I googled “application for absentee ballots” and got a number of individual links to individual states (every state has slightly different requirements and deadlines) but NO place where you could in ONE STOP SHOPPING to get an absentee ballot from any state in union.

I thought about making Ethan cookies, but instead we went to work.

Presenting One for the Table’s National Guide to absentee voting.

Many states have slightly different requirements. In most cases, the application and the ballot must be sent to your individual county! The links are all here. Click on your state and follow the instructions on the web-site for your home state! The deadline in some states for receiving the application is October 15th, so get on it!

Please pass this on to anyone who has a child in college or a friend with a child in college or, as I do, an ex-husband in London. And if you have a facebook page, you might want to throw the link up.

Also below, links to Rock the Vote and a couple of other useful web-sites for registering to vote and registering to vote absentee!

Rock the Vote

Long Distance Voter

also featured on The Loop

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites

2 Comments


Val September 23, 2008	I think it's important to note that one selects the state of voter registration. College students can register to vote in their college towns. The key is they have to vote where they registered. Moreover, college students often move within their county during their four years of college and do not know that they should re-register with their new address. If they used their home address when they registered, they have to vote absentee. Otherwise, they can vote in their college towns. Can students who registered to vote in their home towns re-register to vote when they move to campus? Depends on timing and individual state requirements. Might be worth it to get Ethan (and all other college students) registered on campus. There's nothing like walking into a voting booth... Val

Val September 23, 2008	Just a warning about on-campus voter registration. Some Counties have been intimidating students threatening totally false, dire consequences of voting on campus (e.g., parents will no longer be able to claim them as dependents). There is a Supreme Court case that specifically states that students have the right to register to vote at their campus addresses (Symm vs. United States, 439 U.S. 1105 (1979))

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