Your state ballot has not arrived and the deadline is coming. The Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot is the federal backup, and every state must accept it for federal races. Here is when to send it and how to fax it.
📠 Fax Your Backup Ballot From $2.99The Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB, Standard Form 186) is a backup ballot for military and overseas voters who requested a state ballot that never arrived. FVAP recommends sending it if your ballot has not reached you 30 days before the election. UOCAVA requires every state to accept it for federal offices. Complete it at FVAP.gov, print and sign the Voter Information page, then return it by whatever method your state permits: mail, email, or fax. If your real ballot arrives afterwards, vote and return that too. Only one will be counted.
The trigger is simple: you registered and requested a ballot on time, and it has not arrived. FVAP recommends submitting the FWAB as a backup if your state ballot has not reached you within 30 days of the election, or sooner if you are somewhere mail is unreliable.
Do not wait to be certain the ballot is lost. The FWAB exists precisely because international and military mail is slow and unpredictable, and sending it early costs you nothing.
This is the question that stops people sending it, so here is the answer plainly. If your state ballot arrives after you have already sent the FWAB, you should vote and return it as well. If both reach your election office by the deadline, only the state ballot is counted and the FWAB is set aside.
It is not voting twice, and it is not a risk. The Department of Justice states that UOCAVA requires states to accept FWABs in all federal elections, and that a state will only count one of the two. Sending both simply raises the chance that at least one arrives in time.
In most states the FWAB is a backup only, not a way to register. These states and territories require you to have registered and requested an absentee ballot before the FWAB can be used: Alabama, American Samoa, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
If your state is on that list and you have not sent a Federal Post Card Application, do that first. Some other states will accept the FWAB as a simultaneous registration and ballot, but only if it arrives before both the registration and the ballot request deadlines.
The FWAB comes in two parts and they have opposite rules.
The Voter Information page carries your name, your US voting residence address, your contact details, and your signature. Sign it. For military voters the voting residence is usually your last address in your state of legal residence; for overseas citizens it is usually the last place you lived before moving abroad. You do not need any current tie to that address, and it must not be a PO Box.
The ballot itself must stay anonymous. Do not sign it and do not write your name, Social Security number, or driver's licence number on it. Writing on the ballot is the most common way people spoil an otherwise valid FWAB.
Write in either a candidate's name or a political party for each federal office. Most states require you to name a political party to vote in a primary.
The FWAB always covers federal offices. Whether your write-in votes for governor, state legislator, mayor, or a ballot measure actually count depends entirely on your state, and states differ. There is space on the form for them, and filling it in costs nothing, but do not assume those votes will be counted without checking your state's rules on FVAP.gov.
Return methods follow the same state rules as any voted ballot: some states allow fax, some email, some a portal, and eighteen allow nothing but mail. Where fax is permitted, you print the completed form, sign the Voter Information page, then send it to your county election office.
Two things to get right. The deadline for an electronically returned FWAB is usually the close of polls on Election Day, and it is the arrival that counts rather than the sending. And FVAP's own fax relay closed in August 2025, so you fax your county directly, never FVAP.
Which states permit fax return, and under what conditions, is covered in our guide to faxing your absentee ballot from overseas.
If your real ballot turns up after the deadline has passed, send it back anyway with a note saying it arrived too late to use. A ballot that goes out and never comes back signals to your election official that you may have moved, and can lead to you being removed from the rolls.
Check your state permits fax return, then send it to your county election office for $2.99 and keep the timestamped confirmation.
📠 Fax Your Backup Ballot From $2.99