The ballots to military personnel and registered voters overseas are sent out first in the election season… California Secretary of State Debra Bowen says those voters have an option—they can fax their ballots— to make sure they’re received on time.
“Or try to rely on mail from someplace where you don’t know whether it’s going to get back in time you might choose to make that trade off and we want voters to be able to do that.”
The number of voters overseas isn’t very large. For example, the Secretary of State’s office reports 44-thousand of 62-thousand military and Californians overseas cast ballots in the November, 2004 election.
Meanwhile the rest of the popular absentee or “vote by mail” ballots will be sent out in early January. The deadline to register to vote is also coming up next month—it’s January 22nd.