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"The 2012 Republican primary's first vote was not cast in New Hampshire, as most Americans would assume. An Okaloosa County, Fla., resident living in Thailand got that privilege in December, thanks to a new technology called LiveBallot. \nLiveBallot, 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. \nOnce voters download their ballots \u2014 from anywhere in the world with Internet access \u2014 they can return them by postal service or, for overseas voters only, fax. \nYou 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. \n\"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.\"\nNelson 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. \n\n\nTo date, some 1,200 Floridians in 40 counties have used LiveBallot to vote in the 2012 primary, which will take place Jan. 31. Virginia just made ballots available in advance of the state's Super Tuesday primary March 6. California will follow suit in April, before its June primary.  \nOkaloosa County, one of the Florida's 13 counties chosen to participate in a pilot program through Democracy Live, is unique for its proportion of military voters. Among its population of 120,000, some 20,000 are members of the armed services, meaning the likelihood of absentee voters is exceedingly high. \nPaul Lux, Okaloosa County's supervisor of elections, says he's motivated to pursue online voting options because of the lack of progress made to help military voters in recent years. There have been several instances in past elections when voters abroad, particularly those serving in the military, did not have their votes counted. \n\"They mail me to ask for a ballot and hope I get it, then I mail them a ballot and hope they get it,\" Lux says, speaking to the uncertainty of the pre-digital system. \"That's what's driven my passion to hoping we can use technology to better reach these voters.\"\nDo you think ballots available in the cloud is making a big stride toward equality for absentee voters? Do you think the process is only half-way complete? Let us know what you think in the comments. \nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, manley099"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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