Absentee ballot
An absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station to which the voter is normally allocated.
The history of absentee voting dates back to the 19th century, and modern-day procedures and availability vary by jurisdiction.
Absentee voting may be available on demand, or limited to individuals meeting certain criteria, such as a proven inability to travel to a designated polling place.
Electoral laws typically allow for the integrity and secrecy of the submitted ballot to be maintained, and stipulate a series of checks to protect against voter fraud.
Depending on the system applied, electors may have to return their ballot papers by post, or there may be an opportunity to deliver them by hand to a specified location.
In 2016, the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey was conducted via all-postal voting with a turnout of 79.5 percent.
The Cook government's bill to restore postal voting was one of the "triggers" for the double dissolution prior to the 1914 election.
Postal voting was eventually restored by the Hughes government in 1918 and has not been challenged since, although the provisions and requirements have been amended on a number of occasions.
[30] Prior to Federation in 1901, Western Australia introduced a form of postal voting in 1877 with strict eligibility criteria.
Victoria passed a similar law in 1899, and the first federal postal voting legislation was also modelled on the 1896 South Australian act.
Postal votes are available to those who will be absent from their electoral division through travel, or who those are unable to attend a polling booth due to illness, infirmity, "approaching childbirth", caring responsibilities, reasonable fears for their safety, religious beliefs, imprisonment, status as a silent elector, or employment reasons.
Postal voters receive their ballot(s) and a prepaid envelope containing their name and address, as well as a predetermined security question from the PVA.
In 2017, however, the system was dropped after the French National Cybersecurity Agency assessed an "extremely high risk" of cyberattacks in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Like in many other countries, in more recent years, voting by mail has become increasingly popular among younger and non-disabled citizens residing within the country; as such, various tools Archived 2021-03-10 at the Wayback Machine are being developed to help citizens, both domestic and abroad, more easily apply for postal voting.
[44] Hungarian citizens living abroad who do not have an official address in Hungary are allowed to vote by mail.
The Representation of the People Act-1950[49] (RPA) section 20(8) allows postal ballots for people on polling duty; members of the armed forces and state police as well as their spouses; employees of the Government of India who are officially posted abroad; and the President;, these are also called service voters.
In August 2010, Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill-2010 which allows voting rights to NRI's was passed in both Lok Sabha with subsequent gazette notifications on Nov 24, 2010.
Civic society organizations have urged the government to amend the RPA act to allow NRI's and people on the move to cast their vote through absentee ballot system.
[63] In the Republic of Ireland, postal votes are used in Seanad Éireann elections for the university constituencies and the vocational panels, both of which have restricted franchises.
Absentee ballots are restricted to soldiers, prisoners, sailors, overseas diplomats, disabled persons and hospitalized people.
In Malaysia, opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim alleged that postal votes have been used by the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition in securing seats in certain constituencies.
[65] In Malaysia, only teachers, military personnel, and policemen based away from their constituencies are eligible to submit postal votes.
In case of Senate by-elections, AVC may be issued only for voters living and registered in given single-member constituency.
The application must be submitted personally or through a representative in case of illness or disability certified by a medical certificate.
Likewise, voters overseas can register to vote with the Thai missions in their country of residence or send the ballot to them by mail.
[86] Security of mailed ballots is controlled by using special paper in some areas,[2] and, more often, by requiring signatures of voters and sometimes witnesses.
[88] [89] Processing large numbers of ballots and signature verifications accurately has numerous challenges other than fraud.
To vote you need to go in person to the circuit and show election workers your physical voter ID.
Every absentee ballot is manually controlled after election day to avoid the same voter casting more than one vote.
The system is regarded as extremely difficult to tamper with, and accepted by all involved parties as safe and anonymous.
