As I blogged a few weeks ago, the 2009 and 2011 regular sessions of the North Carolina General Assembly made major changes in absentee voting for military and overseas voters, including allowing ballots to be sent and received by those voters by email and fax. Long delays in snail mail to military voters and those in other countries had made it hard for those voters to get their ballots back in time to be counted. Now, with absentee voting having started Friday September 7, data based on requests received through Friday, October 5 show these voting groups are making heavy used of these methods. Over 76% of overseas voters and over 52% of military voters so far have requested that their ballots be sent back and forth as an email attachment. This should greatly improve the voting success rate for the military and American citizens abroad. Military and overseas absentee ballots must be received by the local counties by 7:30 pm on election day to be counted, or mailed/transmitted by 11:59 pm on 11/5 and received by 11/15. Here are the stats as of 10/5:
Military
Email 2880 52.6%
Fax 15 0.3%
Snail 2578 47.1%
TOTAL 5463
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Overseas
Email 4147 76.8%
Fax 12 0.3%
Snail 1237 22.9%
TOTAL 5396
Posted by gercohen 
Drafting Musings 