- Hey guys, my name is Meghan Kelly and I'm with the
Federal Voting Assistance Program,
and today I'm joined by Chief Bertrand, Chief Bertrand.
- Hi, I am the senior enlisted advisor
for many programs at the DOD level,
to include the Federal Voting Assistance Program.
I'm also a reservist, and a spouse
of a retired military member,
so I've voted in a lot of different ways during my career,
and we're excited to talk with you today
about voting and how to do it
if you don't happen to live where you need to vote.
- That's right.
So we're joining, we're with Military OneSource today,
they invited us here today to talk about absentee voting
for our service members and their spouses.
If many of you notice,
we're right in the middle of an election season.
We're about one month away from November 6th,
which is the general election,
and a lot of people don't know
that the Department of Defense has a voting program
for military service members and their spouses.
Did you know that before you came?
- I did not. - You can be honest, yeah.
- I was gonna be very honest.
And I still figured out how to vote via absentee ballot,
but I now know how much easier it would've been
to find the information had a used FVAP.gov.
- So the Federal Voting Assistance Program
is the Department of Defense program
that is specifically tasked
with helping our service members, their military family,
eligible voting age dependents, and any over sea citizens
with absentee voting.
So our resources that we're gonna talk about here today
will get you help so that you can register to vote,
request your absentee ballot,
and then send your ballot back home.
And it's pretty easy, we're gonna go over it all today,
but I think a lot of people don't realize
that DOD has this great program, and I'm really,
I get excited to work with them.
So we're gonna talk about some of the resources today.
The first step is, if you haven't registered to vote yet,
it is important that you start that now.
It is like I mentioned a few minutes ago,
about one month from the general election,
a little less now, the general election is November 6th,
so you have to get registered.
I think that's the part that kind of trips everybody up.
And we talked about this before we got started,
that the calendar, you have to think about it in advance.
You have to start mailing back your forms early,
and you have to kind of think about it,
it's not as easy as waking up on election day,
and going at voting at your polling precinct.
Where do you live now Chief Bertrand?
- So I live in Maryland.
And so I'm a registered voter there.
In 2016 election I happened to be
on reserve duty in Illinois,
so I requested an absentee ballot to vote in Maryland.
But have voted all different ways.
And recently I was sharing with Meghan yesterday,
my son is a college graduate
and now if kind of out on his own,
and is my military dependent.
He's lives in Pennsylvania now, and he did actually just use
the regular Pennsylvania site to get his information,
even when his mom works for FVAP.
So we don't really care where you get your information,
we just want you to know that you can vote--
- And it's available to you.
And that if you get hung up, we're here to help you.
I'm gonna talk about it, at the end
I'll gonna definitely give you our 1800 number,
we have a call center, and we can answer your calls,
you can call us and ask us
your very specific situation that you're in,
we can help you kinda sort through that.
Or if you just genuinely stop listening to me
you can always call us and we'll give you the answers.
But the first thing I wanted to talk about,
the first step in this process
is you need to be registered to vote,
and you have to request your absentee ballot.
Election officials do not automatically know
where you are located in the world, and as we work often
with service members and their families,
and you guys move around a lot.
- [Amanda] We sure do.
- And so en election official
won't always know where you are,
won't always know automatically how to find you,
so it's important that you register to vote,
and request your ballot,
with the most up to date information that you have.
And the best way to do it is using this form.
This is my favorite form.
I love DOD because we have all these forms and acronyms,
but this is my favorite, this is called
the Federal Postcard Application, for the Standard Form 76.
And it is a one page form that is specifically designed
for active duty service members, their military spouses,
and voting age dependents.
It's a pretty cool form.
It is called a postcard, because it literally folds in half
and you can pop it is the mail just like this.
It used to be a lot smaller back in the day.
I've seen old ones, I don't know if we've ever
showed you any of our older forms,
but it used to be just really mini postcards,
and so it's changed.
But it's really important that you start with this form.
It's available on our website.
It does two things in one, it registers you to vote,
and it requests your absentee ballot.
So if you can get this form,
you can come to our website ad find it and complete it,
and submit it to your local election official,
you'll be good to go, everything will be all set.
And then the next thing is
that the ballot arrives in the mail,
and then you vote your ballot,
and send it back to your local election official.
So it's pretty easy.
I was talking to Chief Bertrand earlier
and we were talking about some of the issues
that our military spouses may face in this.
And a lot of that is just communication,
they may not realize that this program
is available for them to use, just like the service member.
We spend a lot of our time, I think I can say this,
within the Department of Defense,
focusing on service members,
and so we wanna make sure that our military spouses know
that this whole entire program is for you as well.
And we can help you, and you're eligible to use these forms,
and we're here to make your live just a little bit easier,
just as we're here to help service members.
- Right. - Yeah.
And then so I wanted to talk about,
let me make sure I'm not forgetting anything first of all.
This is our first Facebook live event by the way,
so I think I may have forgotten that if you have questions
you can send questions in and we'll take questions.
This will only last like 10 or 15 minutes,
but we're both very nervous, so ask us your questions--
- Oh, I think we have one.
- We have one.
- Oh.
- [Man] Yes, we have a question,
or maybe more of a comment from Patricia, who says,
"While I served over seas,
"I was always told our votes were never counted.
"Is that true?"
- So it's not true.
This is a huge misnomer, I think we talked about this
when you were getting to know FVAP program a lot.
This is like the number one myth that we hear,
is that our service members are like,
oh I'm not gonna do that whole process
because my ballot will only be counted
if the elections close.
Or they won't count my ballots because I'm living overseas,
or serving outside of the country.
And that is absolutely false.
They will count your ballot.
When I was first training with FVAP
I got the opportunity to go to an election official,
and sit with them on election day.
I saw how they open these ballots and they count them,
they are very much counted.
I don't know if I've told you this,
so this will be new information for Chief--
- Tell me a story, forget about voting, this is exciting.
- Yeah, we get to work with election officials too,
they're the over half of the equation.
We have the voter on one end,
we have the election official on the other.
And so I've gotten the opportunity to work with them,
and every time I go meet with election officials,
they by and far talk about how they will go above and beyond
to make sure that our service member ballots,
their military spouses,
and anybody living over and working overseas,
that they'll go above and beyond to serve them.
And so no, that is false.
We still want you to request your ballot and send it back,
'cause it will always be counted.
So yeah, that is a major myth.
- And I think the news media falls into that a little bit,
because they're calling an election sometimes
before the polls are even closing.
- Sure, that happens, the news
will call elections lied late at night--
- That's completely different than the election officials
saying that the election is over.
- It's true, it is true.
At the very bottom of the screen,
there's usually a little message that says
it's just an estimate of an exit poll,
or something like that.
And usually the election is certified several days later,
to specifically allow for those
military and overseas ballots to come back in.
- Yeah, there have been a couple of very close
primary elections where it's come down to
they've had to count.
And it's taken them a couple of weeks
after the election was actually held,
to figure out who the winner was.
- Oh yeah, completely.
So that is a myth, it's okay, I'm glad you asked it,
that's a great question,
but go ahead and still do this whole process,
your ballot will be counted when it gets back home.
So, great question, thanks, keep them coming.
And others Bruce?
No, okay.
Well I wanted to talk about some of the things we've heard.
Well, on myths I can talk about one for military spouses.
Specifically we get a lot of questions about,
what is my voting residence address.
I move around a lot, I'm a military family,
we move around every two or three years,
how do I keep track of what my voting residence is?
And I think you've probably,
in your own life, experienced this.
- Absolutely, yes.
- And so, for voting specifically, it is,
your place if you're a service member,
it's often time where you're paying taxes,
or what you consider your legal state of residence.
So the example I like to share
is that Sergeant Smith may be a legal resident of Florida,
but he's currently in the Air Force
and stationed at Ramstein, so he and his family members
will request that absentee ballot from Florida,
and that ballot will get sent to them out in Germany,
and they would vote it and send it back.
So, voting residence is a big question,
because our service members move around,
and that's just the nature of how it works.
But you can always call us at FVAP
if you have a really complicated moving story.
You've got a license from one state,
your car's registered in another, and your considering,
we can help you sort all through that.
- Sure yeah.
- And then the JAG office we can always--
- Yeah, so I am a paralegal by trade in the military,
and our office symbol is J.A. and we used to say
that that stood for just ask.
And we would get questions about voting residency as well,
so I wasn't surprised when I heard
that was kinda a confusing issue.
And something that I didn't think about,
but let's say that you have Sergeant Smith over at Ramstein,
and he has a son who turns 18 while they're over there,
where would Sergeant Smiths son register to vote?
- So that's a very good question.
So you're voting, so your dependents also qualify
to use all of our program resources at FVAP,
and they can get registered to vote,
just as any other 18 year old would.
They would use the same forms,
the Federal Postcard Application,
that would register them to vote and request their ballot.
If they were born overseas,
they would use their parent or legal guardian's
last known US address.
So if the son was born overseas and stayed overseas,
and then he turned 18 overseas,
he would use Sergeant Smith's home,
legal address back home in the states.
And that's how it would work, and it's pretty easy
We get that question a lot too.
And there are people turning 18 all time,
so we get a lot of calls into the call center about,
oh my son or my daughter's turning 18
they want to vote this election cycle,
how can they participate?
And they're eligible to use all of our same materials
that spouses and our service members are.
Reminded me while you were talking though,
I wanted to talk about
all the other resources that are available.
Yes, our program is here for you,
but if you are in another country,
you're stationed in Germany or any other country,
we have a great partnership with the State Department,
and embassies and consulate's offer the same voting advice.
I don't know if you knew
how closely we work the State Department.
But the ACS staff, the American Consular staff,
they are trained to give voting assistance.
So if a military spouse, it's easier for them
to get to an American consulate or embassy,
they can go there,
they can receive hard copies off all these forms,
and that ACS staff can help them
get all their materials back to the US,
so that's a huge help.
And then all of our Airman and Family Readiness centers
have voting assistance, so if you're in the Air Force,
if you're a military spouse, and you're already
at the Airman and Family Readiness center,
they have all of our programs.
There's always an installation voting assistance officer
on every military installation.
And on our website we give you
their address and their phone number
so you can look us where they're located.
But every military installation
has a voting assistance officer,
and they can also provide you assistance.
- Yeah, and as I travel I try to check in
with those folks at the installation,
and see sort of how they're delivering their message
to service members and their families, particularly.
Since that's kinda what I'm keyed in on.
- Yeah, they do a good job.
They will hang posters up,
I see posters hung in Commissaries,
at BX, at PX, at the gym, everywhere.
- I was pretty excited, it was on the banner,
the electronic banners,
as I was driving into the base where I live.
I came back I said, hey I saw it, reported back.
- Yeah, that's good.
Well it is the season so everybody
should be talking about it at this point.
The air conditioning just kicked on
so we were just listening to that.
So yeah, so after you get registered to vote,
say you request your state ballot, and it never comes.
And you're like, I watched that Facebook live event,
and Meghan and Chief Bertrand said
that my state ballot will show up
and it hasn't yet, what do I do?
And we have an answer for that as well,
and this sometimes happens,
especially if you're located outside of the US,
where mail may be a little less reliable,
or there just may genuinely be
a lag in time in the mailing system.
We have what's called the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot,
I have one here with me,
I can just hold it up so you can see it.
It is an actual ballot for voters to use,
you can write in your candidates,
and it's available on our website.
And this is again, a form that is specifically designed
for our service members, their families,
and any overseas citizens.
And it is just for those exact reasons,
when that state ballot doesn't arrive,
or the dog ate it before you could open it,
or little Johnny spilt his ice cream on it.
This is a backup ballot, it is only for
our service members and their families to use,
nobody else can use it.
And it gives you that opportunity
to send your vote back home
if you never got that state ballot.
It's only gonna allow you to select federal candidates,
but it still gives you that opportunity to kinda vote
if that state ballot kinda got lost in the transit process,
which is pretty cool.
- Absolutely.
- Yeah, I wanted to tell a story about this if I can.
How are we doing on time?
Somebody give me, okay good.
I had to go up to training, you know we do training,
you know how we do training every federal election year.
We love training at the Department of Defense.
And so I was up at New London, Connecticut,
where there's a submarine base there,
and I had the chance to talk to some submariners there,
and some local election officials in the Connecticut area.
And after they told me a great story
about how this backup ballot
helped a service member get their vote back home.
And that service member was gonna be down in a submarine,
this was during the 2016 election,
and it wasn't going to surface for a long time.
I mean, these people, that's just,
in awe about what they can do.
- Right, they're kind of their way of life, you know.
- But that service member really wanted to vote,
and this Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot
was the perfect way.
They could complete it, they were able
to send it to their local election official
before they deployed and were put on the sub,
and they didn't have to worry about mail,
and they were still about to participate
in the 2016 election.
So, these Federal Write-In Absentee Ballots,
while they are a couple pages long,
they're not as easy as that Federal Postcard Application--
- It's your second favorite form.
- Yeah, it's my second favorite one.
They are meant to be used, they've saved a lot of people,
and given a lot of people the opportunity to vote.
So use it if you're in a pinch.
If you're listening to this and it's too late,
or you're worried it's too late,
or you don't watch this for another two weeks
and now it's two weeks out from the election,
you do have an option for you,
and that is the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot.
It's a great backup.
- As long as you're already registered.
- Yes yes, you gotta be registered first.
And it's pretty cool yeah.
- And that's what I love about FVAP,
I feel like you've thought of everything within this--
- Hopefully!
- Because it can be as high tech as you want it to be,
where the website it very slick I have to say,
for a DOD website I like it a lot.
And certainly there's a lot of great information
that you can get from there,
but there's also sort of the low tech version,
so you can always default.
If you're in that forward operating base,
or the power goes out in a hurricane
and you need something to do.
- Yes, you can always look up here--
- So we brought, you wanna show them.
- Oh yeah, let's show them this book.
- Oh yes.
- This is not a doorstop by the way.
If I walked into somebody's office
and if they're propping open a door with this
I get my feelings hurt.
- Aw.
- But it is 480 pages, and the reason why it's so big
is because it has all the state information
for every single state.
And I get a lot of questions
when I go out and I'm traveling for FVAP,
they're like, you're the Department of Defense,
why are you still printing something this big,
and put it on the web.
And it is on the web, you can go to our website
and you can look all this information up,
but in the climate that we're in,
we have to think of that
forward deployed service member, with little infrastructure,
they need, may not have a lot of time to access the internet
or if they're answering emails
they may be answering emails to their families,
and not necessarily looking up election information.
So we print these big old books,
and we ship them literally around the world.
We ship them to every military installation,
we ship them to every embassy and consulate.
That way in those situations,
if you don't have a lot of time, or little infrastructure,
you can go to your voting assistance officer
on your installation or forward operating base,
you can say, hey give me that guide,
it's called the Voting Assistance Guide.
You can flip to my state, and from Nebraska
you can look up Nebraska election dates and deadlines,
and know how to complete this process
without ever having to get on the internet.
- Yeah, I was on an Army post,
and one of the unit voting assistance officers
turned it to the right page for the person, and she had them
take a picture of the page with their phone.
- Oh cool.
- So that they could then later
just pull up that photo image,
and fill it out in their dorm room or whatever.
I thought that's very clever highbred of high and low tech.
- Yeah, we love that.
'Cause that's just reality, sometimes it's easier--
- Make it work.
- Sometimes you may not have the time
right then to fill out the form,
but if you take it back to your room
you might be able to fill it out,
and you just wanna know how to complete it.
And it's just easier to kind of refer to a book sometimes.
Listen, I've been doing this job for three years
and I still keep this book on my desk,
'cause if somebody calls me
and asks me a question about a specific state,
I haven't memorized every state,
so I've gotta refer to it too.
So it's pretty cool.
Well did I cover everything?
Do we have any other questions Bruce?
No questions.
Aw, you guys were very nice.
- That means you covered everything.
- I guess to wrap it up at the end,
I just wanna hammer home, it's not too late,
if you are watching this for the first time,
and are just starting to think about the election,
we are just a little bit less than a month away.
If you are a service member,
or the spouse of a service member,
go to KVAP.gov, that's F-V-A-P dot G-O-V.
All of the resources are available on our website,
you can complete the Federal Postcard Application,
that will register you to vote,
that will request your absentee ballot,
then you wait for your state ballot to come.
And if that state ballot never comes, or the dog eats eat,
you always have the backup ballot available for you to use.
And all that is available on our website.
And we also have a call center, and staffed by our own.
So you can ask for me, you can say,
hey I wanna talk to that crazy girl Meghan,
or I wanna talk to Chief Bertrand--
- Oh boy, they'd have to come get me,
but I would talk to you on the phone.
- So you can call us and that number is,
I'm gonna say it really slow, I'm gonna say it twice,
1800-438 vote, V-O-T-E, which is 8683,
that's again, 1800-438-VOTE, 8683.
You can call us, we're open Monday through Friday,
you can give us your specific situation,
again, if you've had a couple moves,
and you're not really sure
where you're legal state of residence is,
we can help you sort that out.
And we can kind of help you to your specific situation.
So, anyways, I think that does it.
Did I get everything?
- I think you did.
Thank you so much Meghan, I learned a lot--
- Yeah, thank you for coming, oh good.
- So fun.
- Alright you guys, we'll see you later.
Bye. - Bye.