Thread: 8 million Americans living abroad may tip a close election

8 million Americans living abroad may tip a close election

Helena Bachmann, Special for USA TODAY
11:19 a.m. EDT September 6, 2016


GENEVA — Although Champaign, Ill., native Judith Maltby has lived in Great Britain for 30 years, she returns to the United States regularly and follows U.S. presidential races.
This year's election is of particular concern to Maltby, a chaplain at England’s Oxford University who hopes "the U.S. remains a serious partner with democratic Europe and continues to be outward looking." She said she is backing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton because Republican "Donald Trump's campaign is about isolationism of the most destructive kind."

Maltby is one of approximately 8 million Americans living abroad, a group large enough to tip elections in close presidential and state contests.

They could not vote until 1975, when the Overseas Citizens Voting Rights Act became law. Since then, non-partisan organizations, including Vote From Abroad and Overseas Vote Foundation, have offered help, such as how to register from abroad.

Those living abroad have different priorities from voters who live in the U.S. “It’s inevitable that our varied perspectives are influenced by having lived under other countries' political systems,” said Dorothy van Schooneveld, a former lawyer who moved to France from Bloomington, Ind., in 1987.

The top voter issues in the United States are economy and terrorism, according to a Pew Research Center survey in July. While those are important issues to expatriates as well, their top concerns are taxes and the requirement to report financial assets deposited in foreign banks, according to American Citizens Abroad, a worldwide advocacy group for expats.

In an attempt to reduce its budget deficit, the U.S. government taxes expatriates on earnings generated in a foreign country — the only industrialized nation to do so.

The rules concerning which assets need to be reported change often, making it difficult to figure out what is required in a given year. And the fines for even unintentional errors are hefty: up to $10,000 a year for undisclosed foreign accounts, even if they don’t generate any taxable income in the United States.

Other top issues of unique concern to those abroad are "recent legislation that could cause denial or revocation of passport for perceived tax debts, problems of citizenship transmission to children born abroad, and reduction of Social Security payments if one also has a foreign pension,” van Schooneveld said.

Presidential candidates almost never address such issues.

“Expats are generally not on the radar of the federal government, and there is little reflection of these concerns on the current campaign trail,” van Schooneveld added.

As a result, turnout by these voters is usually low. Only 15% of eligible overseas voters cast their absentee ballots in the 2012 election, said Jay Sexton, former director of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University, who co-authored a report this year on the impact of expat voters on U.S. elections.

Even so, expat voters on rare occasions may play a decisive role in a presidential election. “The most dramatic came in 2000, when delayed overseas ballots put George W. Bush narrowly in the lead over Al Gore when the Florida recount was stopped by the Supreme Court,” Sexton said.

“Had the election been decided based on the (overseas) ballots that had arrived by the November 26 deadline, Al Gore would have won the state of Florida, and the presidential election, by 202 votes,” Sexton added.
Perhaps that's why both parties court the expat vote through their outreach groups, Democrats Abroad and Republicans Overseas.

Marc Zell, co-chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel speaks as the Republican Party launches its first ever election campaign in Israel in Modiin, on Aug. 15, 2016. (Photo: Ariel Schalit, AP)


“The Democrats are better organized and institutionalized than Republicans," said Sexton, who noted that overseas Democrats have their own primary and send delegates to the national convention, while "Republicans do not have either of these.”

To encourage Americans abroad to register to vote, Democrats Abroad is holding social events in different countries — a rooftop cocktail party in Geneva, an Oktoberfest in Munich and a BBQ in Mexico City.

Republicans are taking steps to catch up. A new conservative political action committee, American Voices International, was formed in London in March “to advocate causes for overseas Republicans,” Sexton said.

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While expats may not affect this year's presidential race, they could make a difference as Democrats try to recapture the Senate.

Democrats Abroad said expats provided winning margins in very close Senate races, such as the 9,329-vote victory in 2006 by Democrat Jim Webb in Virginia's Senate race, which gave control of the chamber to the Democrats, and the 312-vote margin that elected Democrat Al Franken to the Senate from Minnesota in 2008.

“Given the current state of the presidential campaign, I don't think this demographic will swing the outcome for Clinton or Trump,” Sexton said. “But overseas voters could have a marked impact on congressional/Senate races.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...tion/89779420/

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