Expats and service members abroad are a potential voting gold mine that the RNC is suing to board up.
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One of the worst parties I ever went to was in a large pub next to Euston station in central London. It was thrown by DAUK (Democrats Abroad UK) on the night of November 8, 2016, to celebrate the election of the first female president in US history.
London is of course five hours ahead of East Coast time, so we had to wait awhile for the returns, but no one was paying much attention to the Midwestern states until things started going south. It was like that “Houston, we have a problem” scene in Apollo 13 — maybe the monitors weren’t working right, because state after state seemed to be falling for that figment of the DTs, Donald Trump, who, against something like 600 to 1 odds, ran the table of battleground states.
In the UK we were still suffering the trauma of the Brexit vote less than four months earlier, not to mention the death of David Bowie in January.
The celebration at the pub gradually turned into a wake.
Suing to Block a 40-Year-Old Law
This year, Republicans are aiming to gate-crash the party and repeat that wake, only even more funereal. A flurry of lawsuits have been filed in battleground states — including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina — specifically targeting American voters living abroad, including military service members.
These lawsuits challenge a 40-year-old federal law, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which affirms the right to vote of US citizens who live overseas. It requires states to allow such citizens to register and vote by mail in federal elections.
It’s clear that Republicans don’t like this law. On September 23, Trump stated on Truth Social that Democrats are “working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living overseas. Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT!”
Elon Musk has similarly claimed on X that Americans “plan to steal elections using ‘overseas’ ballots.”
Despite having a far lower voter turnout rate than in the US, Americans abroad can make a difference in pivotal elections. Even bringing the turnout up to a very modest 20 percent would add on the order of 350,000 votes — for an election expected to be decided by tiny swing-state pluralities totalling far fewer.
Two days later, Trump shared Musk’s post on his Truth Social, writing, “Lawyers at RNC — STOP THIS FRAUD, NOW!!!”
Two weeks after that, the RNC filed their suits.
Low Turnout but Potentially Decisive
Overseas voter turnout is much lower than stateside. According to the Federal Voting Assistance Program, in 2020 there were 2.9 million Americans living overseas eligible to vote. Of these, it’s been estimated that under 8 percent of them actually returned ballots.
But despite having a far lower voter turnout rate than in the US, Americans abroad can make a difference in pivotal elections. Even bringing the turnout up to a very modest 20 percent would add on the order of 350,000 votes — for an election expected to be decided by tiny swing-state pluralities totalling far fewer.
Julia Bryan, the international chair of Democrats Abroad, contends that these legal overseas votes can be decisive.
A case in point, cited by Bryan, was the Florida election for commissioner of agriculture in 2018: “Nikki Fried was down by a few hundred votes in Florida following the deadline for regular absentee ballots. Overseas votes were the only votes still to come in and be counted. She won by 6,700 or so.” (This was out of over 8 million votes cast, a margin of 0.08 percent.)
Bryan said that in 2020 approximately 3 percent of Voters From Abroad (VFA) were registered Republicans and 75 percent were registered Democrats, which just might explain the Republican efforts to suppress this vote.
In a Politico report, Bruce Heyman, former US ambassador to Canada, confirmed this pattern, indicating that this year the overseas vote is vastly skewed in Harris’s favor. “From all the analysis that we’ve done and seen, something like 80 percent of Americans abroad vote Democratic,” said Heyman. “It’s because they care about foreign policy and the stature of America in the world and are very worried about a potential Trump return.”
In 2020 in Georgia, a state that Joe Biden won by just under 12,000 votes, officials counted 18,000 ballots from overseas. If Bryan and Heyman are even ballpark accurate about the split, the simple arithmetic speaks for itself: The overseas vote was decisive.
Americans vote from the state of their last US address, making swing-state expats particularly valuable to the Harris/Walz campaign.
According to The Washington Post, citing the office of Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, the crucial swing state has sent out 25,000 ballots to Americans abroad so far this year. This is a potentially decisive number in the event of a close election. In the 2020 election, Biden won both Arizona and Georgia by less than half that number, and Pennsylvania polls forecast a comparable dead heat this time.
The flurry of Republican lawsuits in battleground states signals the fear the GOP has about these overseas voters — including military service members, who have in the past skewed Republican but more recently have trended toward an even split between the two parties.
OK for Now
Judges have not yet issued rulings and for now, according to Reuters, the states’ existing overseas voting procedures remain in effect, though the litigation has introduced potential for confusion and delay of a highly time-sensitive process.
Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law, told NBC News that the lawsuits amounted partly to a publicity effort, but that they could be regarded as “placeholder lawsuits,” which the GOP could use to challenge groups of ballots after a close election, claiming they’d raised the issue beforehand.
Martha McDevitt-Pugh, international chair of Democrats Abroad, told the (London) Independent, “It’s really disturbing to see lawsuits that are attempting to undermine Americans abroad and the military and their right to vote.”
Recently I joined a small team in London’s West End to observe their voter outreach in action. Outside the Damn Yankee wine bar on Drury Lane a group of expats set up a small stall, complete with Stars and Stripes and Harris/Walz posters, to find fellow Americans who might not be aware of their right and inform them how to apply for a ballot from their home state.
One of the organizers confided to me that the biggest reason a lot of Americans abroad refrain from voting is the fear that the IRS will track them down and hit them up for US taxes (on top of their foreign taxes). In fact, according to Jeff Vanderwolk, a senior tax attorney and former official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, there’s no connection between the IRS and voting, and no one is penalized for participating in a stateside election.
Wouldn’t it be something if the work these groups have done, and the votes that come in from Americans around the world, turn 2016’s wake into 2024’s celebration?
The outreach effort ran up against a typical English obstacle: the weather. Rain soon forced the team to move inside, but the work continued, and a few Americans drinking US wines were engaged in conversation and encouraged to apply for their stateside ballots.
Laura Mosedale, who’d moved to London from Washington, DC, told me that despite the rain, the effort was worth it, noting. “A lot of elections are decided by very small margins.”
With this election looking so close, these votes from abroad could prove pivotal to a Harris win.
I’m still weighing whether or not to join the Democrats Abroad UK party on November 5. So far nothing’s been announced, so maybe they aren’t having one — though, given the circumstances, I find that hard to imagine. On balance, if they send out invites, I’m likely to go.
Wouldn’t it be something if the work these groups have done, and the votes that come in from Americans around the world, turn 2016’s wake into 2024’s celebration?
Hope springs eternal. But voter outreach actually counts.
J.B. Miller is the author of the upcoming novel Duch (Lori Perkins Books). He’s an American citizen who has lived in London since 2006.
