If you were a military member stationed overseas during the 2004 election cycle, you pretty much had a one-in-three chance of your vote falling by the wayside. But now, a Cupertino, California-based company is helping to usher in a new era of absentee military voting before the November elections.

According to a 2005 report issued by the National Defense Committee (NDC), the 761 voting jurisdictions responding to an NDC survey reported receiving slightly over 131,000 absentee voting applications from military members for the 2004 election.

Of these, approximately 95,000 of these ballots were eventually counted as legitimate votes, representing a disenfranchisement rate of 30 percent. While it’s easy to speculate about the accuracy of the NDC’s survey—hearing from 761 out of 7,838 local election offices is hardly statistically representative of the total—it’s hard to ignore the coincidences.

After all, the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) discontinued the development of its Interim Voting Assistance System (IVAS) shortly after the 2004 election. Designed to let absentee voters receive their absentee ballots over the Internet, the voluntary program wasn’t exactly a smashing success--only 17 people downloaded ballots.

Enter 2006; Congress passed Public Law 109-234 on June 15, calling for the reincarnation of the antiquated IVAS program and giving its creators, Dreifus Associates, LTD (DAL), $2.5 million in funding for system improvements. For the technological answer, DAL turned to PostX, a company that specializes in secure messaging applications for enterprise business.

Maximum Electronic Interaction

PostX is changing the 2004 equation by keeping the interaction between voters and local election officials as electronic as possible. While the 2006 version of IVAS is based on the 2004 version in theory, the 2006 product has been completely rebuilt.

In essence, IVAS is a quasi-webmail-themed system. Local voting officials can quickly scan through new electronic ballot requests and either send a ballot package, defer the request, or deny it. Following an accepted ballot request, potential voters log in to the system to download PDFs of the ballots themselves, which they then send to their election offices via normal mail.

“There is no question in my mind this is the path for absentee ballots,” said Scott Olechowski, vice president of product strategy for PostX.

The system has been live since September 1, and can be accessed via http://ivas.dod.mil. While PostX ultimately hopes to gain a client base of 225,000—the number of armed forces members stationed overseas, according a Department of Defense transcript—the company’s biggest challenge is proving to local election officials and state legislatures that its electronic solution is worth using.

“I think the people who do use it will be happy with it,” said Cayce Ullman, PostX’s chief executive. “The bigger question is whether the people will have enough of a voice to get the rollouts.”

Contact the writer:DMurphy@RedHerring.com

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