Absentee ballot interior return envelope
Object Details
- Description
- This unused envelope was designed to enclose a completed official federal war ballot and be inserted into an outer envelope for mailing. The legal-sized envelope printed in red reads “USWBC Form No. 3—INNER ENVELOPE” and the heading, “OATH OF ELECTOR FOR VOTING IN THE GENERAL / ELECTIONS TO BE HELD IN 1944." The flap side is printed with fill-in blanks under heading “OFFICIAL FEDERAL WAR BALLOT FOR GENERAL ELECTION." See also 2024.2001.4 for an unused ballot of the type that would have been used with this envelope.
- Members of the military were allowed to vote absentee in the 1944 election thanks to an act of Congress. The War and Navy Departments supported the adoption of a universal ballot in which military personnel had to write in the names of the people they wished to vote for. The design of the special ballot enabled the government to distribute it before candidate names became available, thus allowing for the weeks-long mailing and shipping time to distribute the blanks and received completed ballots from overseas voters. The ballot was only good for federal, not local, elections. Not everyone in Congress supported the bill and in the end states were encouraged to amend their own absentee ballot procedures to allow military personnel to vote. Eventually 20 states authorized the use of the federal war ballot.
- This unused envelope for an official federal war ballot is from the collection of William Callahan, a career US postal inspector, who served with the US Navy during World War II and applied his knowledge of postal logistics to his assignment of coordinating voting procedures for the US Navy personnel during the wartime elections.
- References:
- Bamford, Tyler. “The Soldier Voting Act and Absentee Ballots in World War II.” The National WWII Museum. Modified October 19, 2020. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/soldier-voting-act-1942-absentee-ballots.
- Carter, Russ W, and Military Postal History Society. War Ballots: Military Voting by Mail from the Civil War to WWII. Cypress, TX: Military Postal History Society, 2005
- Inbody, Donald S. The Soldier Vote: War, Politics, and the Ballot in America. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
- Manning, Molly Guptill. "Fighting to Lose the Vote: How the Solider Voting Acts of 1942 and 1944 Disenfranchised America's Armed Forces." New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy, Vol. 19, Issue 2 (2016), pp. 335-378. https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/fac_articles_chapters/1170/.
- Credit line
- Gift of the Estate of Jean Frances Callahan
- Data Source
- National Postal Museum
- Date
- 1944
- Object number
- 2024.2001.5
- Type
- Covers & Associated Letters
- Medium
- paper; ink
- Dimensions
- Height x Width: 3 15/16 × 8 7/8 in. (10 × 22.54 cm)
- See more items in
- National Postal Museum Collection
- Topic
- World War II (1939-1945)
- Covers & Letters
- Record ID
- npm_2024.2001.5
