The Expat Factor: Making Overseas Votes Count

The numbers back this up. According to a survey Ansolabehere and others conducted for Pew, military and overseas voters are almost twice as likely as domestic voters to experience registration problems. But even when these voters do manage to register properly, there's no guarantee that their vote will count. According to a survey of 24,000 overseas civilian and military voters done by the Overseas Vote Foundation, 22 percent of those who requested ballots did not receive them, and another 40 percent received ballots too late to be sure they could be returned in time to be counted. A 2009 Pew Foundation report titled "No Time to Vote" found that one-third of all states do not provide enough time for military personnel stationed overseas to vote. Indeed, according to a survey performed by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), half of all overseas ballots that were rejected in 2008 were rejected for failing to meet the deadline.

I've experienced some of these difficulties personally. My husband and I both registered to vote in the 2008 presidential elections. But although we live at the same address, he received his Illinois ballot and I never did. Instead, I had to download a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB) from the Overseas Vote Foundation, which I mailed in just like a regular, locally supplied ballot. But despite concerted efforts to publicize awareness about the FWAB fallback option, less than half of the UOCAVA voters surveyed above were are aware of its existence.

The good news is that all of this is about to change. In late 2009, a new law called the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act was passed. It is designed to correct some of the problems that have restricted the enfranchisement of overseas American voters in the past. Beginning with the upcoming general elections in November, the bill requires all 50 states to make voter registration and absentee ballot applications available electronically, as well as a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot. In addition, all states must allow a 45-day window for the ballot "round-trip."

According to Margo Miller, international voter registration chair for Democrats Abroad, the official Democratic Party organization overseas, it's not a moment too soon. Over the past decade -- and despite all of the problems listed above -- overseas votes have proved decisive in a number of local and national elections. Expats are widely credited with securing narrow victories for the Democrats in 2006 senate races in Virginia and Montana, not to mention George W. Bush's razor-thin victory in the Florida recount in 2000. This past year, overseas ballots were decisive in the much-watched races for New York's 20th and 23rd Congressional districts. (In the NY20 race, for example, the New York State Election Board extended the deadline in order to count all overseas ballots separately, so it was very easy to document their impact.) "Even in a place like Montana," says Miller, "where you wouldn't normally think there'd be a lot of overseas voters, we've been able to use our data to show a difference."

The existence of that "expat factor" has had two important effects. On the one hand, it's been a powerful recruitment device for both political parties when they mobilize voters overseas. William D. Barnard is chairman of Democrats Abroad UK, one of the largest and most active chapters of Democrats Abroad worldwide, accounting for about 15 percent of its total global members. His organization goes out of its way to make sure that American living abroad are made aware of the difference that their vote can make.

Although Barnard cannot reveal overall membership numbers, he says that membership in his chapter has tripled twice -- first between 2000 and 2004, fueled by the anger over Bush's victory ("Until Obama came along, Bush was our best recruiter") and again between 2004 and 2008, amid the excitement generated by Barack Obama's candidacy. According to his organization's internal head count, the number of Americans registered with Democrats Abroad as a percentage of the total American community in the U.K. (some 250,000 people) is greater than the percentage of card-carrying Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters in this country combined. "That's an impressive penetration," he adds.

Republicans Abroad has also seen its membership rolls swell in recent years. Although this organization is not officially affiliated with the Republican National Committee (RNC), Republicans Abroad also focuses on voter outreach and education overseas, albeit on a smaller scale than its Democratic counterpart. UK Chairman Tom Grant took over the reins last March. While Grant is also reluctant to cite specific numbers, he says that in terms of both membership and event attendance, "we are moving up to a multiple of what we had just one year ago." Not surprisingly, Scott Brown's recent victory in the Massachusetts Senate race has galvanized the base overseas. "It was an absolute mood changer," Grant affirms.

But the growing recognition of the importance of the expat vote also affects how the respective parties treat voters overseas. On the Democratic side, according to Miller, awareness within the party leadership has changed "dramatically" in the past five years. On the national level -- and for the first time ever -- the DNC sent 14 paid staff around the globe to help get out the vote during the 2008 presidential election. And after New York election officials saw what happened in NY20, they were in constant contact with Miller during the NY23 race to see how they could be of help overseas.

On the Republican side -- and partly as a result of seeing how successful the Democrats were in mobilizing overseas voters during 2008 -- talks are already underway about concrete strategies for strengthening the relationship between Republicans Abroad and the Republican National Committee. According to Grant, "There's a recognition that there's a vote out there that we could be capitalizing on . . . especially when you have such evenly divided elections in places like Florida and Ohio." One possibility under discussion is to incorporate Republicans Abroad back into the party, as it was years ago.

What is clear is that neither party is taking anything for granted in the current climate. In the aftermath of the Massachusetts election, Grant says that his group will continue to do what it's always done but "with a better head of steam." He is pleased that more volunteers are signing up daily to do voter outreach.

For its part, Democrats Abroad has fine-tuned its database to target voters state by state through phone banks and e-mail campaigns. Three rounds of e-mails already went out to Illinois voters abroad in anticipation of last week's primary. According to Barnhard, in the upcoming months they will conduct similarly targeted campaigns for key races such as Virginia's 5th District, which incumbent Tom Perriello narrowly won in 2008.

Still, even with all of this enthusiasm and the passage of MOVE itself, a lot is going to depend on an old-fashioned technology that has long bedeviled overseas voters: the postal service. As Miller puts it, "At the end of the day, even if registration and ballot materials are electronic, the ballots still need to go through the mail. Which isn't such a big deal if you live in a place like the U.K. But it can be a major problem if you live in Afghanistan." Relying on the mail is particularly problematic given that several states -- including New York -- are holding primaries as late as September this year, creating potential overlap with the general election two months later.

Tom Grant sums it up well: "MOVE is a good bill. And there will be some teething issues. But it's a policy objective that we all share: to make Americans aware that we can vote overseas and to make it straightforward."

Let's hope that it really is that simple come November.


Follow Delia on Twitter.