When the war started, just one state allowed soldiers to vote outside their election districts. But in the run-up to the 1864 election, 25 states enacted legislation allowing absentee voting, historical documents show. A soldier could vote in the field, as depicted in the Harper’s Weekly artwork, or by proxy, sending his marked ballot to someone in his home voting district to cast on Election Day.
Absentee voting during the Civil War wasn’t without incident. Army Pvt. William James Smith, a member of the 2nd Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, recalled breaking away from his unit to vote in a village somewhere between Winchester, Va., and Hagerstown, Md.
“I went to the polls with two comrades, one of whom was killed and the other badly wounded within 20 minutes after we cast our votes for Abraham Lincoln,” he wrote sometime after the shift-key model typewriter was introduced in 1878."