Make Voting Work (MVW) is a Pew initiative aimed at ensuring that all steps in the voting process—from registering to vote to casting and counting ballots—are convenient and secure for citizens. Michael Caudell-Feagan, Director of Make Voting Work and a Senior Officer of The Pew Charitable Trusts, says, “We have embarked on this multi-year, multi-million dollar investment because we believe the systems underpinning elections should be improved, thereby strengthening our democracy.
“Unfortunately, Americans in the military and civilians overseas face additional burdens when it comes time to cast their ballots. At MVW, we believe that no segment of the electorate should be underserved, regardless of where they live, and that is why we are launching this new project to address the complex process facing these voters as they attempt to register to vote and cast their ballots. To this end, it is been our honor to support a series of innovating and important initiatives. These projects include the development of Web applications that enable these voters to navigate conflicting state laws and working with the Uniform Law Commission to begin a drafting process that will yield a model state law offering needed simplicity and clarity. In addition, we support an array of pilot projects in the field that may yield improvements in the ballot transmission problems and outdated registration rolls that plague this segment of the electorate.”
The September summit will be a forum to discuss new technological innovations to make the voting process easier to navigate, new research and pilot projects in the field and strategies aimed at making voting more convenient and secure for the estimated six million Americans military and overseas citizen voters.
Your help is needed!
We have received the following request from Make Voting Work. You can help them help all overseas voters, by sharing your story and your ideas with them. They write:
Make Voting Work, a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, knows how challenging it is for military and overseas voters to actually vote. That is why it has undertaken a major policy initiative to fix the problems you face. Make Voting Work wants to hear your story and get your ideas on how to improve our election system for military and overseas citizens. If you have had problems with ANY part of the voting process (getting forms, filling them out correctly, getting the information you need, receiving or returning your ballot on time, etc.) in the current or past elections, please let us know your story and share your ideas on how to improve the election system by contacting us at .
AND if you do write to MVW, could you send a copy to so that FAWCO, too, has a record of the kind of incident or concern you are reporting? Thank you from FAWCO!