Topeka ? Kansas elections officials hope a new program will make it easier for National Guardsmen serving overseas to vote this year.

Dubbed “Operation Vote,” the program is aimed at getting ballots into the hands of members of the Guard who are deployed worldwide and returning them to Kansas in time to be counted in the August and November elections.

“We want them to have the opportunity to participate in our own democracy at the same time” they were serving, said Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh.

On Tuesday, 543 applications for absentee ballots were sent to deployed soldiers and their commanders worldwide.

Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting, the state adjutant general, said in the future, packets with voting information and applications for absentee ballots would be sent to all commanders before deployments, with letters from Thornburgh explaining the program and thanking them for their service. Ballots will then be sent by mail or faxed to soldiers in time to cast their votes.

“We can really shrink the world, for the most part,” Bunting said.

Thornburgh said military ballots would be sent 45 days before the primary and general election; to be counted, they are due back by the day of the election. Military ballots will be returned to county election officers to be counted in the Guard members’ home precincts and will be treated like any other absentee ballot.

About 1,500 members of the Kansas National Guard are deployed overseas, or are on alert for deployment, in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Kosovo, including 350 soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 130th Field Artillery, who have been in Iraq since March.

“We hope the day comes when they’ll all be able to cast a vote locally in their own hometown, but that’s not the world situation we have right now,” Bunting said.

Additional alerts and mobilizations were possible before the November election, he said.

Thornburgh said Operation Vote was similar to a federal voting program that helps active duty soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are deployed. Approximately 3,700 soldiers from Fort Riley are in Iraq, and an additional 700 infantrymen are expected to deploy in the coming weeks.

Thornburgh said it was difficult to track the voter participation of military personnel because ballots are private and military votes are not separated from those of the general population. But Bunting said a significant number of Guard members were in their 50s, a demographic that traditionally has a strong voting record.