How to

Handle Ballots Delivered by Email

This topic explains how to process a mail ballot delivered to UOCAVA A ballot requested by/delivered to a U.S. citizen who: (1) is a member of the uniformed services or the merchant marine who is deployed overseas or deployed domestically away from their county of residence, (2) is a dependent family member of a service member/merchant marine and is away from their home county due to military deployment, or (3) resides outside the United States. These voters may cast an FWAB and they are eligible to receive ballots by email or fax. In the Voter Focus system, UOCAVA is a flag applied to a vote-by-mail ballot, not to voters themselves, since a voter's UOCAVA status can vary from election to election. voters via email, from the initial request through return of the voted ballot.

1—Record the Mail-Ballot Requests

2—Email the Ballots to Voters

Note  Before doing an Email run, we recommend you read How to Verify the Success of Outgoing Emails.

3—Return the Ballots Received from Voters

1—Record the Mail-Ballot Requests

Typically, requests for email delivery come from UOCAVA A ballot requested by/delivered to a U.S. citizen who: (1) is a member of the uniformed services or the merchant marine who is deployed overseas or deployed domestically away from their county of residence, (2) is a dependent family member of a service member/merchant marine and is away from their home county due to military deployment, or (3) resides outside the United States. These voters may cast an FWAB and they are eligible to receive ballots by email or fax. In the Voter Focus system, UOCAVA is a flag applied to a vote-by-mail ballot, not to voters themselves, since a voter's UOCAVA status can vary from election to election. voters who have made FPCA Federal Post Card Application. A form provided by the federal government to permit members of the uniformed services, their dependents, and U.S. citizens residing abroad to register to vote and to vote by absentee ballot. or all-elections requests. You can also record a single-election request for a email delivery, provided that the request comes from a UOCAVA voter or their representative.

To record an FPCA or all-elections request for email delivery:

FPCA requests—Follow the instructions in How to Process a Mail-Ballot Request from an FPCA Applicant.

All-elections requests—Follow the instructions in How to Process a Mail-Ballot Request for All Elections.

For both types of requests, when you are filling out the Request All Elections dialog, choose Email in the Default Delivery Method field. Then enter the voter's email address in the E-mail field on the voter's Vote-by-Mail tab.

If an FPCA or all-elections request was recorded recently, those voters are likely to already have a request for the election. But if an election was created after an FPCA or all-elections request was recorded, voters making those requests will not have a request created until the following day, after the scheduled daily run of the AbsenteeGenerateRequests program. (This background task runs about 5 am unless your county has rescheduled its run time.) To create these voters' requests for this election immediately, go to VOTE BY MAIL > Vote-by-Mail Generate Requests. For more information, see How to Create Mail-Ballot Requests for All-Elections and FPCA Voters.

To record a one-time mail-ballot request for email delivery:

1.     Go to VOTER REGISTRATION > Voter Maintenance and find the voter's record.

2.     On the record's Maint tab, verify that the voter's status is either Active (there are several Active statuses) or Inactive. Also verify that the green box in the lower-left corner of the Maint tab says Overseas, Military, or Military Dependent. If not, the voter is not eligible to receive their ballot by email.

Note  If the voter is not a UOCAVA voter and therefore not eligible to receive an email ballot, the system will still allow you to request delivery by email (as described below in step 5). However, when you do the Email run in VOTE BY MAIL > Deliver Ballots, the voter will be included in the list of voters who were not provided ballots (at the bottom of the Ordered List of Absentee Labels report), because they are not eligible for email delivery. To fix this, go to the Vote-by-Mail tab in the voter's record, click Mail-Ballot Adjustments, and change the Delivery Method field to Mail. The voter will appear in the next absentee run for mailings.

3.     Display the Vote-by-Mail tab and click New Request.

4.     On the Vote-by-Mail Request dialog, highlight the election.

7.     If you want to print an Absentee Request Information Sheet to your default printer, click Save and Print. If you don't want the sheet, just click OK to save the request. If the voter's email address hasn't been entered yet, you'll see a message to that effect. Just click Yes to continue.

8.     On the voter's Vote-by-Mail tab, enter their email address in the E-Mail field.

The email address will appear on reports listing voters who have requested ballots delivered by email.

2—Email the Ballots to Voters

3—Return the Ballots Received from Voters

From the Voter Focus standpoint, vote-by-mail ballots delivered by email and then voted and returned—regardless of the method of return (mail, fax, or email)—are processed like any other returned ballot. Your county might have special procedures for handling these ballots, but the return-processing through Voter Focus is the same as for ballots mailed out in the conventional way. See How to Record the Return of Mail Ballots for instructions.

Keep in mind that although absent domestic military voters are eligible to receive their ballots by email, they must return their ballots by mail. Returns from these voters by email is not permitted under Florida law.

Note for Relia-Vote Counties     Mail ballots that were emailed to UOCAVA A ballot requested by/delivered to a U.S. citizen who: (1) is a member of the uniformed services or the merchant marine who is deployed overseas or deployed domestically away from their county of residence, (2) is a dependent family member of a service member/merchant marine and is away from their home county due to military deployment, or (3) resides outside the United States. These voters may cast an FWAB and they are eligible to receive ballots by email or fax. In the Voter Focus system, UOCAVA is a flag applied to a vote-by-mail ballot, not to voters themselves, since a voter's UOCAVA status can vary from election to election. voters cannot be returned through the Relia-Vote system, regardless of the method by which they were returned (by email, fax, or regular mail). These ballots also must be return-processed as described in How to Record the Return of Mail Ballots. Voter Focus does not send their return disposition to Relia-Vote, because Relia-Vote has no record of these emailed ballots being sent out.