Long Distance Votes

Voting with absentee ballots in the States is one thing...but trying to vote from a remote town in the mountains of Laos is quite another!

The process started back in August. A trip to the Chester town office seemed easy enough. Fill out a slip of paper...sign it and turn it in. "Great! That was easy, our ballots will be sent to the MCC office in Laos!"

Easier said than done. October dawned and our ballots had not yet arrived. The US Embassy in Laos had sent out a newsletter with all the options for voting. All of them involved sending our ballots back to the US. That is also easier said than done in a country with no formal domestic mail system!

Our best option was to print out our ballots from the Federal Voting Assistance Program website. Thankfully since we already requested our ballots during our visit home the process was as simple as filling out our information online and printing the resulting PDF and envelopes.

Ready to Travel

Now the journey begins! Getting our votes in the mail was fairly urgent as it takes 15 days minimum to get back to the US from Laos. We gave our sealed voting envelopes to a fellow staff member traveling to Vientiane by bus (150miles). From his home it was picked up and brought to the MCC office (10miles). The MCC driver then ferried the ballots to the US Embassy (3miles). From the US Embassy the envelopes are traveling to some unknown location in the US via the Embassy's diplomatic pouch (~8000miles). And then they will be delivered to our county's town clerk's office (~3000miles). In total our votes will travel around 11,163 miles before they are counted! We hope they make it in time!

How far is it to your voting station?