Fordinary voters are as easily overlooked as Americans who live outside the United States. This population—immigrants, military personnel, dual citizens, and people born outside the US to American parents—is both diverse and unpredictable. It is thought to have at least 4.4 million people, some 2.8 million of whom are eligible to vote in US elections. Historically, only a small fraction did.
But as that election heats up, Democrats and Republicans alike are looking everywhere for votes that could be the edge of victory—including abroad. This year, for the first time in a presidential cycle, the Democratic National Committee gave Democrats Abroad, the party’s international arm, $300,000 to fund its get-out-the-vote effort. On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump last month signed off on what could be a key area for expats in the outcome when he promised to end the requirement that Americans living abroad file US tax returns – an obligation considered “double taxation” among US citizens who expatriate. and pay taxes in the country they live in. Democrats and Republican expats have been campaigning for decades to end it.
The poll puts Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump in a dead heat, and the last time Americans voted for president, in 2020, some swing states were decided by as many as 10,000 votes. “In Georgia, as well as in Arizona, we saw the number of votes from abroad more than close the margin of victory for Biden,” said Martha McDevitt-Pugh, the Netherlands-based international chair of Democrats Abroad. “If we can get the votes of Americans abroad, we can make a real difference.”
It can be a difficult group to assemble, in part because overseas voting is fairly involved: You must request an absentee ballot from the last state you lived in (“your voting home”), and return it (electronically in some states, by mail in others) by the state’s absentee deadline. Before the American people can be urged to go to the trouble, however, they must be found. Campaigners set up stalls at local farmers’ markets and at American sporting events, such as the NFL games played in London and Munich. There is also what one Democratic Alliance campaigner in Britain describes as “guerrilla PR,” which involves leaving cards with voter registration details in train carriages or shopping carts of people with a distinct North American voice.
But the easiest place to find other Americans is on the Internet. “Our way of knocking on the door is through digital outreach,” McDevitt-Pugh said. “It’s using social media, it’s using advertising to be able to wake up the American people and remind them that they can vote and bring them the resources they need to be able to do that.”
In the spaces of the Center that is not part of the US Foreign Voting Project, Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Veep and Lily Collins of Emily in Paris encourage Americans living abroad to request their votes. The amount they do, at the moment, is very small. Only 7.8% of eligible Americans abroad voted in the 2020 presidential election, and 3.4% in the 2022 midterms. Campaigners say they hope those numbers will increase. “The overseas vote is the biggest unknown factor in the election,” said Sharon Manita, global press secretary for Democrats Abroad, adding that in the final days of the campaign the level of enthusiasm is “very high.”
An American overseas may not be filled with the same issues that drive the country’s voter, because “domestic” issues like the US economy are not immediately relevant in London or Singapore. “Foreign policy is more important to Americans here than it is in the US,” said Greg Swenson, UK chairman of Republican Overseas, an independent at the Republican National Committee. “We are close to Ukraine, we are close to the Middle East. Many of us go to both places. “
Taxes, instead of a dividing point, provide common ground. “[Double taxation] it’s one of the rare things we work on together,” said Swenson, of Democrats and Republicans overseas. “I think he’s a real pollster. … It’s an opportunity to get people who don’t normally vote to register to vote, because that’s the only issue they care about.”
However, on the topic of the expat vote, the Republican party showed its own signs of division. Despite Trump’s promises about a double tax burden, some Republicans have questioned the validity of overseas votes, even filing lawsuits against them in swing states – where the DNC says 1.6 million Americans overseas are eligible to vote (apparently relying on different data than the Federal Voting Assistance Program, which puts the total number of eligible US voters abroad at 2.8 million).
The GOP’s efforts were roundly rejected by courts in the battleground states of Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, which ruled that the RNC did not have grounds to challenge the states’ election laws. They were not welcomed by the campaigners, either. “I find that impossible,” Swenson said of alleged overseas voter fraud. “Since I have applied to vote in absentia, I think that will be really difficult.”
More than unbelievable, McDevitt-Pugh calls it “a stunning attack on our democracy…To have Republicans in the last weeks before an election suddenly challenge rules that have been in place for years or decades, that’s an important example of a voter.” being threatened and trying to suppress the vote,” he said. “A challenge like that can be very confusing for voters, and that confusion can make a voter take the steps they need to take in order to be able to vote.”
