There is an interesting story in the New York Times about the rapid growth in the number of college students taking advantage of study abroad programs. With more than 200,000 such students likely to be away during the 2008 elections, it raises the interesting question of how these students can be tapped into the voting process.

Obviously, this is something where the combination of Internet-facilitated registration — such as being done by the Overseas Vote Foundation’s new system — and Internet transmitted ballots, via email — can be helpful in promoting the voting process.

On the subject of overseas voting, I was in the Salt Lake County elections office last week, discussing absentee voting, and they told me that in 2004 they received military ballots back from soldiers in MARCH 2005 that were post-marked before the 2004 election. If you ever wonder why people support electronic ballot transmission, that would be one reason!