<p>So a little bit early, but I'm curious as to what to do. </p>
<p>Being a part of the political process is really important to me, and I'm going to a school in another state, and one that requires a plane ride (or a really, really long car ride). I really want to register for an absentee ballot, but the problem is that I will not be 18 until I am away at college and there is no point where I fly home before the actual election day. Is it still possible to register for an absentee ballot for the 2011 elections if you will be 18 before the actual election day, but are still 17 when you are in your home state? </p>
<p>I've been worrying about this pretty much since I got in, and I figured CC would be the best place to ask. Is anyone else registered for an absentee ballot? Or had the same problem with a late birthday?</p>
<p>I’m in NJ. I’m just worried because my birthday is actually a few days before the election, so I don’t know if they’ll let me finish everything in time.</p>
<p>Yes, you will be able to register to vote before election day if you are 17 right now. All that matters is that you are 18 on election day. In this past mid-term election, I registered about 2 months early because my birthday is on the 30th of October, and everything went just fine.</p>
<p>I don’t know very much about absentee ballots, but I’m pretty sure they work as expected. That is, you just mail it in from your college, and they count it on election day. I plan on using them when I get to college too.</p>
<p>Just make sure you leave enough time for everything to work out. It might be different from state to state, but for me, it wasn’t just that they mailed me my absentee ballot and I had to mail it back. I had to call the office, then they had to send me an APPLICATION for my absentee ballot, which I then had to mail back to them. THEN they were supposed to send me my absentee ballot. I didn’t know this, so I waited too late and never actually got my absentee ballot.</p>
<p>I didn’t think you could vote by absentee ballot unless you had registered to vote in person or been to vote in person before. Wasn’t there some kind of rule like that? I did an absentee ballot last election and that was an issue.</p>
<p>I don’t know if that’s a rule or not. It was a moot point for me since I had registered and voted in person for the presidential election a couple years prior, but maybe if I hadn’t, it would have been a problem for me, too.</p>
<p>^That was what I was thinking. I had registered and voted before at home, too, because of the presidential election, but I could have sworn I read that I could only do that because I’d done it in person before. Unless I am misremembering, I thought that was why my bf couldn’t get his ballot.</p>