Okaloosa and 12 other Florida counties have deployed a one-stop Web portal that lets overseas voters access their ballots online. They can mark their ballots on screen or print them out. While they still have to return the ballots to their voting districts by mail or fax, election officials are looking toward a time when absentee voters can return their ballots electronically.

How many voters does this impact?

“No one is there to lobby for anything,” said Cat Matsuda, director of development for the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus, which organized the show. “They’re there to show their technologies and to talk about the potential impact of the technology on the forecast for the upcoming year.”

Matsuda said the purpose of the exhibition is to give companies, nonprofits and government agencies the chance to educate Members and staff.

“The overall goal of the advisory committee is to provide education for Members of Congress and government staff regarding Internet and high-tech policy,” she said.

Wednesday night’s Kickoff Reception and Technology Exhibition in the Hart Senate Office Building marked the 15th year the event has happened. The preceding annual State of the Net Conference — which brings leaders in the technology world together with staffers and policymakers to discuss industry issues — took place a week earlier.

For some of the 25 attendees — including the Federal Trade Commission, voter information firm Democracy Live, and social media platforms Facebook and YouTube — their presence on the Hill seems fitting.

Read more about what we saw at the Technology Exhibition >

LiveBallot, a new platform for accessing ballots built on the Windows Azure operating system, allows American citizens living abroad to access their official ballots from the cloud, 45 days before a state primary or national election.

Once voters download their ballots — from anywhere in the world with Internet access — they can return them by postal service or, for overseas voters only, fax.

You may be thinking that getting your ballot online is only half of online voting. However, as Kim Nelson, director of eGovernment at Microsoft points out, it eliminates the more difficult part of the process.

“While it does only solve half the problem, it’s the most important half,” Nelson told Mashable. “A person living overseas is highly mobile, but almost always has access to the Internet. The Secretary of State isn’t moving, so getting it back to the U.S. is a whole lot easier.”

Nelson notes that while several countries in Europe allow Internet voting, the U.S. does not, largely due to security concerns. Making ballots available online does not, however, present the risk of election fraud, because all ballots still must be signed by registered voters.

Read Full Article on Mashable.com >

CivSource spoke with Kim Nelson, executive director for e-government at Microsoft, about LiveBallot an application that is part of the company’s DemocracyLive product which will provide online ballot access for residents of Florida and Virginia. The solution is already in place and since voting began for the Republican primary in December, over 1,200 Florida voters from 40 countries have accessed their ballot using LiveBallot, through an online web portal.

“Florida and Virginia submitted their applications on the basis of using LiveBallot,” Nelson explains. California was also awarded funds from DoD to use LiveBallot and will be opening their portal up for voting ahead of their primary in June.

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