Jessica Leval, Research Assistant, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project

(This piece originally appeared in online version of The American Magazine on November 2, 2008)

November 2, 2008

In 1988, Democrat Andrew Sundberg ran for the U.S. presidency from an unlikely place: Geneva. Sundberg, the former chairman of Democrats Abroad, "campaigned" from his home in the Swiss city in hopes of drawing attention to American voters residing overseas. Though his quixotic presidential bid attracted little attention, it did signal the growing importance of the expat vote.

The current American expatriate population is estimated at roughly 6 million. In 2004, both George W. Bush and John Kerry sent emissaries abroad to campaign for them and hold voter registration drives. This year, both John McCain and Barack Obama ventured abroad themselves.

Unfortunately, numerous problems continue to plague overseas voting. Prior to the 2006 election, 992,034 American expatriates requested absentee ballots—but only around 330,000 of those ballots were successfully cast or counted. Due to mail delays and high postage costs, it is often hard for expats to make their voices heard in U.S. elections.

The Pentagon estimates that some 580,000 members of the U.S. military and their families currently reside abroad, along with approximately 100,000 civilian federal employees. Deployed military members travel frequently and are often inaccessible until they either set up temporary post offices or return to their Forward Operating Bases. This makes it very difficult for them to obtain absentee ballots via mail.

During the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Democrats living abroad were allowed to vote by fax or in person at certain polling stations. Between February 5 and February 12, Democrats residing in more than 100 countries had the option of casting their primary ballots online—the first time e-voting was ever permitted in a U.S. election. (However, online voting will not be an option for expats in the general election.)

The State Department has held successful voter registration drives in various U.S. embassies worldwide, and now many private groups are getting involved. For instance, the nonpartisan Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF), based in Munich, and the Pew Center on the States are cosponsoring the creation and maintenance of an absentee ballot database. Using this new online resource, American expats will be able to look up their specific absentee ballot form, print out the form, and mail it back to the states. This way, if their requested absentee ballot fails to arrive in time, expats will still be able to have their vote counted. Meanwhile, to address the issue of high postage costs, the OVF has partnered with Federal Express to enable expat voters in 89 countries to mail their ballots free of charge or at a deep discount.

Thanks to these changes, Americans living abroad will find it easier to vote in 2008 than they did in 2006. Even still, the expat voting process remains unnecessarily onerous and complicated, particularly for military families. Hopefully, public and private outfits will do more to assist expat voters in 2010 and 2012.

Jessica Leval can be reached at jessica.leval@aei.org.

Viewpoint is an occasional feature analyzing various election reform issues.