Harris, Trump issue appeal to Americans abroad in bid for more votes in tight race

Nearly 5 million Americans living abroad are eligible to vote from overseas, representing a small but unique group that could influence the results in key swing states.

While participation among overseas voters is considered low at less than 8 percent, both Vice President Harris and former President Trump have sent out direct appeals to these voters.

“We know there's a lot of enthusiasm,” said Sharon Manitta, global press secretary for Democrats Abroad, an official arm of the Democratic Party for overseas voters.

“The thing is, really, until the election is settled, goodness knows when that will be, we don't really know how that enthusiasm turns into turnout,” said Manitta, who is based in the United Kingdom.

In 2020, more than 27,000 overseas ballot requests were registered in the swing states of Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Trump, in an Oct. 12 video, called on Americans living abroad to make sure they are registered to vote. He also promised to end double-taxation — where, generally, Americans pay taxes in the country they live in and the U.S. There are exemptions, and policies can vary from country to country.

“It was an October surprise from our side, from Republicans Overseas,” Solomon Yeu, the chief executive of Republicans Overseas, a political advocacy group that worked with the Trump campaign on the video.

It also represented an about-face for Trump, who had earlier criticized and raised doubt over the legality of Americans voting overseas. Trump attacked the 1986 law that established overseas voting as “a program that emails ballots overseas without any citizenship check or verification of identity, whatsoever,” in a post on Truth Social.

Requirements can vary among states but generally a Social Security number or a valid state driver's license, or passport number can be used for identification verification.

Republicans in North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania have pursued, unsuccessfully, efforts to challenge rights for Americans overseas and people born overseas to American parents to vote in the U.S. elections.

And while the Democratic Party has an official arm dedicated to overseas voters, this group is also generally overlooked. In this presidential election, for the first time, the Democratic National Committee provided Democrats Abroad with about $300,000 to help register voters and carry out get-out-the vote campaigns.

Ballot requests for overseas voters opens 45 days before the election, in September. But it wasn’t until Oct. 24 that Harris published an open letter to Americans voting overseas in which she promised to take seriously their concerns surrounding finances, like banking and taxes, as well as access to consular services and immigration and citizenship processes.

“We were pleased … that both candidates have acknowledged that something has to be done on taxation of Americans overseas, or acknowledge that there's an interest in addressing these issues and doing something,” said Marylouise Serrato, executive director of American Citizens Abroad, a nonpartisan and nonprofit advocacy group.

“That's, for us, a really positive sign.”

That came alongside a stepped up effort by the Biden administration earlier this year, which for the first time conducted a survey of Americans abroad on issues they are concerned about, said Martha McDevitt-Pugh, the international chair of Democrats Abroad.

“There really isn’t a lot of data around us, so we were really encouraged by that survey,” she said, adding that it led to the first-ever White House call with overseas stakeholders to talk about increasing awareness around government resources for Americans abroad.

An estimated 2.9 million Americans who live abroad are eligible to vote. Another 1.4 million uniformed services members and 600,000 military spouses and vote-age dependents also live abroad, according to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

It’s not clear how many voters overseas come from specific states; that data won’t be available until well after Election Day and will have to be checked among multiple sources. The number of Americans voting from abroad can fluctuate for a variety of reasons: the increase in people working remotely, people retiring abroad, students studying overseas, Peace Corps workers, and military voters.

Americans voting from abroad request ballots from their last address in the United States, no matter if it was a rented apartment or home or if decades had passed since they last lived there.

And while the Federal Voting Assistance Program counted the participation rate of voters from abroad as unchanged between 2016 and 2020 — at 7.8 percent — the EAC recorded a 39 percent increase in returned overseas ballots between 2016 and 2020 — 655,844 overseas ballots in 2016 and more than 900,000 in 2020.

Still, there are barriers to participation.

Slow postal services, access to printers, personal follow through and confusion over each state’s voting requirements — either the need to mail in a ballot, fax, or submit it online — can also play a role in low participation rates. Rejected ballots are rare, at about 2.1 percent according to EAC, but the most common reason is an absentee ballot received after a state's deadline.

On Thursday, Military Times published a report that election officials in the state of Georgia said 13,000 ballots requested by overseas military and Americans abroad have yet to be returned.

One of the core issues with increasing the overseas vote is education, said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president and CEO of Overseas Vote, a 20-year-old nonpartisan, nonprofit public charity that helps inform people of their right to vote overseas and provides resources to help people submit their ballots.

“The fundamental problem we have with people voting from abroad is they don't know they have the right,” she said.

Dzieduszycka-Suinat, who is based in Germany, said misinformation also plays a role in discouraging people from voting, such as a fear that there’s a connection between voting and increased taxes among people who live overseas.

A myth versus fact section of the Overseas Vote website addresses the connection between voting and taxes.

“That is terrible for us in terms of voter participation, because people think, if I vote, they'll run me down for taxes,” she said.

Still, she welcomes the increased attention on voters overseas as an opportunity to work to improve participation rates, even if some of that attention comes from Republican lawsuits or criticisms over the authenticity of overseas votes.

“There may be a renewed opportunity after the election, depending on how it goes, to improve the program, even more with some reform,” she said.

WHERE AMERICANS LIVE ABROAD