The FVAP Fax Service Has Ended: How Overseas Voters Fax a Ballot Now

What Changed

For about three decades, military and overseas voters who could not find a fax machine had a workaround. You emailed your ballot or form to FVAP, the Federal Voting Assistance Program, and FVAP faxed it to your election office for you. It was called the DoD Fax Service, and the address many voters had saved was fax@fvap.gov.

That service ended on August 1, 2025. FVAP announced it in its newsletter, and state election officials, including California's Secretary of State, told counties to remove it from their websites and ballot instructions. The November 3, 2026 general election is the first general election without it.

The practical result is simple: an email sent to the old FVAP fax address does not reach your county. If you are planning to fax a ballot, FPCA or FWAB this year, it has to go directly from you to your own election office.

Half price until Election Day: use the code BALLOT50 for 50% off any fax that carries the FVAP cover sheet through November 3, 2026. It is applied for you when you add the sheet in the unofax send form, so a 10-page ballot costs about US$2.07.

Disclaimer: This is general information, not legal or election advice. unofax is a fax service and does not run elections. Confirm your state's rules on FVAP.gov or with your county election office before you send anything.

What the Service Used to Do

FVAP started the fax service in the early 1990s, when deployed service members often had no other quick way to get paperwork home. Over time, more and more states began accepting email and online portals, and fewer voters needed a relay.

In 2018 FVAP narrowed it to a single job: turning an emailed document into a fax for election offices that accepted only fax. By then, according to FVAP's own figures, less than one percent of military voters were returning ballots by fax, and personal access to fax machines among service members had fallen sharply. Once that use dried up, the service closed.

The trouble is that guides, old county letters and forum posts still mention the address. If you voted from abroad in 2020, 2022 or 2024, you may have it in your notes.

Your Options for November 3, 2026

How you send your ballot now depends entirely on your state. There are four routes, and most states offer at least two of them to UOCAVA voters.

Method	Where it is available	What to know
Online portal	A handful of states, including Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina and West Virginia	Usually the quickest if you qualify. Follow the state's own upload steps.
Email	Many fax states also take email	Fast, but you rarely get proof it arrived. Send to the address your county publishes, not to FVAP.
Fax	29 states and DC, some only in certain situations	Goes straight to the county office with a delivery confirmation showing the time and page count.
Mail or courier	Every state, and the only option in many	Slow from abroad. FVAP's recommended mailing dates for November 3 have already passed for most locations.

Our state-by-state guide for November 3 lists which states accept a faxed ballot and under what conditions. Louisiana and Oklahoma, for example, take a voted ballot only by fax or mail, so for overseas voters there, fax is the only fast option.

Why Some Voters Still Fax

If your state allows both email and fax, either is fine. People who choose fax tend to do it for three reasons:

• Proof of arrival. A fax delivery confirmation shows the exact time the ballot landed, the number it went to and how many pages went through. An email gives you nothing unless the office replies.
• No spam folder. A fax prints, or lands in the office's fax inbox, rather than sitting behind a filter.
• Some offices prefer it. A few counties still treat fax as their main electronic channel. If your instructions list a fax number first, that is a hint.

Replacing the Relay Yourself

What FVAP used to do in the middle is something you can do from a phone or laptop in a few minutes. You do not need a fax machine or a US phone number.

1. Get your county's fax number from the FVAP directory or your county election website. It must be your own local office.
2. Scan your packet into one PDF. That is your signed voter declaration, every page of the ballot and any state forms. A phone scan is fine.
3. Add the FVAP Transmission Cover Sheet. On unofax.com, choose the FVAP ballot cover sheet, fill in your office and your details, and sign the secrecy waiver on screen. It goes out as page 1 for free.
4. Enter the number, preview and pay. Check that every signature is visible, then send.
5. Save the delivery confirmation. This is the record FVAP's relay never gave you.

The usual price is 59 cents (AUD) a page. Through November 3, a fax with the FVAP cover sheet is half price with the code BALLOT50, applied automatically, so a 10-page ballot costs A$2.95, about US$2.07. If the county line is busy, unofax keeps retrying, and you are refunded if it cannot be delivered.

The Same Goes for the FPCA and FWAB

The relay used to carry more than ballots. Voters sent their Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) and Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB) through it too. Those also now go directly to your county. Most states, including many that do not take a faxed ballot, accept the FPCA by fax, and nearly every fax state accepts the FWAB on the same terms as a regular ballot. If your ballot never arrived, see our guide to filling out and faxing the FWAB.

The Bottom Line

FVAP no longer faxes anything for you, and fax@fvap.gov is a dead end. Check what your state accepts, send to your own county office, and keep proof of when it arrived. If fax is on your list, you can fax your ballot from your browser with the official cover sheet attached. To make sure you are not cutting it fine, check your state's cutoff in our table of ballot fax deadlines in your local time.