America’s 51st state

Today, Americans abroad are probably still upsetting some English types, not to mention people all over the place, but they are also engaged in a vast range of enterprises from business through education to the vast range of tasks undertaken by the U.S. military, and even in humanitarian work. They could be homemakers living with their foreign-born spouses or partners, choosing, no doubt inexplicably to some Americans in the U.S., to live there, rather than here.
It is here in the U.S. where the Americans abroad, perhaps many more than 4 million of them in total, will all suddenly matter very much on Nov. 2, 2004, when bound by nothing more than their American citizenship and its associated right to vote in U.S. elections.
If indeed there are at least 4 million Americans abroad, their combined total would make them the 13th largest state in population terms.
With the Nov. 2 election for the presidency attracting unprecedented attention around the world (a National Public Radio report last week said 90 percent of Europeans would vote if they could for Democrat John Kerry), with polls showing the election could be a tighter squeak than the 2000 one, the two main parties have leaped into action as never before: it’s time to get the vote out.
There are about 100,000 American citizens living in Ireland of whom the U.S. embassy in Dublin is aware, said embassy press spokesperson Mike McClellan, with probably more unaccounted for, such as Irish citizens who moved to the U.S., became American citizens, then returned to Ireland, feeling no need in their homeland to register with the embassy of their second citizenship.
As in other parts of the world, U.S. citizens appear to be registering to vote in the Nov. 2 election for president in greater numbers than ever before. If even a reasonable proportion of an estimated 4 million-plus American citizens overseas vote, they could represent the wildest voting card of all.
Depending on your point of view, President George W. Bush won the state of Florida by 537 votes in 2000. Over 12,000 votes cast in Florida in the controversial 2000 election were mailed from Israel.
This year, there are possibly a couple of million votes that are simply unknown quantities. They are, “the 51st state,” as one American abroad put it to a Wall Street Journal Europe reporter. And no poll is taking them into account.
As in a horse race, there are certain established wisdoms to heed and other unknown factors to consider.
The traditional wisdom is that overseas American votes are three-to-one for the Republican candidate, being dominated by business people and the military. And in the past — again, it is only a rough estimate — about 30 percent of Americans settled abroad bothered to register and vote.
One example of this year’s newly registered voter is Georgina Dubin, who moved to Mexico City from her home state of Missouri in 1937. Dubin, at 87, confessed to the press that she had never voted in a U.S. election. She cast her vote for John Kerry.
“The foreign vote is dispersed,” said Arkansas native James Young, an economist and chairman of Republicans Abroad Ireland. He is 40 and specializes in analyzing property markets, and he settled in Ireland with his Irish-born wife.
“We had [only] three people register through us from Florida,” a crucial swing state again in this election as it was in 2000. Whereas many overseas Americans are from major population centers such as New York and Boston, just as many more are showing up this year and registering their vote in other more crucial states than say Democratic New York or solidly Bush-voting Wyoming.
There is another wrinkle here: voters registering overseas have only a simple process to cast their ballot, but in which state is their vote counted?
Here’s how they do it abroad: the citizen should obtain a Federal Post Card Application for an absentee ballot and mail it to the election officials in the last city town or county in the state where he last lived or voted. This application can be found at the Federal Voting Assistance Program Web site (www.fvap.gov) as well as other sites on the Internet such as Democrats Abroad (ie.democratsabroad.org) and Republicans Abroad (www.republicansabroad.org).
This year, the stakes are high. The Bush administration has told every embassy and consulate in the world to make voter registration regardless of political affiliation a high priority — before, the onus was on the citizen to enquire as to how to cast his or her vote.
Consular staff has actively approached U.S. citizens at cultural events, get-togethers, and on American public holidays asking them if they have registered. At the London premier of Michael Moore’s anti-Bush movie, “Fahrenheit 911,” Democrats Abroad volunteers set up a booth outside the movie theater and did a robust trade in signing up citizens.
And where go the votes? They generally go to the state where each citizen chooses to register as their last place of residence in the U.S.
Thus the case of a businessman from California living in South Africa who wanted to vote for John Kerry: he had first registered to vote in California, then again in Tennessee while at school and a third time in Georgia before he moved abroad. He reckoned his Democratic vote meant most in Tennessee.
“It’s basically one system with 50 sets of rules,” Young said. Voters ought to register their last place of residence as the state in which they cast their absentee vote, but not every state keeps the same check on where its citizens have disappeared.
Democrats Abroad Ireland is having a successful run registering voters for Kerry, the likelihood being that most Americans living in Ireland are Democrat-leaning: some registration drives by Democrats Abroad have seen a 350 percent increase on 2000.
James Young said he’d encountered plenty of Republicans in Ireland, home to more than 600 U.S. companies, and als, some retired U.S. military personnel living in the splendor of the west of Ireland. They had, Young said, been captivated by Ireland’s beauty on a simple Shannon stopover.
But the military vote this year is also more of a mystery to be teased out only by the tallying of the votes. Traditionally the military leans Republican, but since the invasion of Iraq the Army Times newspaper has editorially lashed the Bush administration, criticizing everything from the lack of a coherent strategy to the soldiers operating with poor protection and thinly armored vehicles: here to, there may be a backlash vote for Bush’s opponent.
Americans abroad have a unique perspective on their country, seeing this all-powerful nation in only its second decade as the world’s only superpower from an outsider’s point of view themselves as well as hearing the extreme criticisms and compliments showered upon America.
Whether we like it or not, American policies have vast consequences and U.S. decision-makers cannot lift a finger without their actions having effects around the world on people to whom they are not accountable. Americans resident abroad will feel the consequences of the result of the 2004 election in unique ways — perhaps as the deadly face of terrorism or other upheaval.
With this in mind, some Americans abroad have been using the Internet to some effect to encourage fellow U.S. citizens abroad to vote.
One example is the nonpartisan Web site, Tell An American to Vote (www.tellanamericantovote.com), set up by some expats living in Amsterdam. It urges non-Americans somewhat condescendingly to send a message to their American friends, urging them to vote.
One more presidential cycle will have to slide by before analysts and politicians will gain a clearer picture of the overseas vote — thanks to Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York. Maloney chaired the government reform committee in Congress and she helped make sure that Americans living overseas will be counted in the 2010 census, with a view to planning better voter registration drives and services.
Joe Nash, an American resident of Mexico recently helped register new Democrats in Mexico City – it’s believed the greatest concentration of U.S. citizens abroad is about 1 million in Mexico, though the U.S. Embassy has knowledge of only over 350,000. He recalled founding Democrats Abroad Mexico in 1952 to help the campaign of Adlai Stevenson. Aged 92, he is in fighting shape.
“Definitely there will be more voting from abroad this time. What happened in Florida was sickening,” Nash said. It remains to be seen which party is courting votes or courting disaster.