I’m an American voter overseas. For years, we were ignored – but maybe this time we’ll make the difference

By Alexander Hurst, The Guardian.

In the rush to defeat Trump, we’re suddenly on the frontline. It’s a shame, then, that so few of us actually vote.

The United States doesn’t show much love to its citizens who live abroad. For instance, it was impossible for me to declare my driving licence lost and request a reprint because my home state of Ohio’s state government website seems to frequently not work outside the US. And while a VPN provides a potential workaround, the steps to verify your identity require … a US phone number. No, the infamous citizenship-based taxation and financial reporting regime – meaning Americans worldwide have to report their accounts held in foreign financial institutions to the IRS – doesn’t only affect wealthy tax cheats, it makes life difficult for plenty of normal people. And if you’re fed up enough to want to ditch your US citizenship, well, I hope you’ve got money to burn, because that will cost you a $2,350 administrative processing fee.

The one thing that’s always worked pretty well for me, though, is voting from a distance. Some states are more online than others, allowing you to email a request for an “absentee ballot”, whereas Ohio makes me sign a paper form and send it in the mail. From that point on, however, every time I have voted things have gone smoothly. By mid-September this year, a thick envelope landed in my mailbox in Paris, containing the six-page ballot with little blank ovals waiting to be bubbled in with a pen. Not just the presidential race, but also for Senate and the House of Representatives, a host of state offices, a dozen or so races to elect various judges and, finally, state and local ballot initiatives. (If you’re curious – yes, I voted to raise local taxes on alcohol and cigarettes to increase funding for Cleveland municipal schools.)

This year, I’ve felt a lot more love and attention than normal from my electioneering compatriots. For the past month, I’ve gotten at least one phone call a week from a volunteer with Democrats Abroad. Even my Instagram feed has been full of actress Lily Collins popping up in-between my friends’ stories with a video on behalf of the Center for US Voters Abroad Turnout Project, urging me to request my mail-in ballot.

It seems like political parties, candidates, interest groups and media have all of a sudden clued into the fact that there are potentially several million “new” votes to be had from Americans living in other countries (estimates range, but the US government puts the number of eligible voters outside the US at 2.8 million), with the largest numbers residing in Canada, the UK, France, Israel and Australia.

“Nobody really knows how many eligible US voters live abroad,” Sharon Manitta, global press secretary for Democrats Abroad, tells me. When it comes to civilians voting from abroad, the churn of students and digital nomads mixed in with those who have permanently settled in different countries makes it tougher to track consistent numbers.

One thing is clear though – few Americans abroad actually vote. In 2016, 633,613 ballots were returned from outside the US, 73.7% of which were from non-military voters; in 2020, that grew to 911,614, 63% of which were non-military. And estimated turnout for American citizens living abroad was only 3.4% in the 2022 midterm election. By all counts, there is a huge pool of votes that has the potential to swing critical states.

Recognition of that fuelled greater interest from parties, candidates and political action groups this year, Manitta, says. “We can prove – as in, we have the numbers – that voters abroad brought in Georgia and Arizona [for the Democratic party] in 2020,” she told me. It’s a plausible claim: 18,475 ballots from overseas voters were cast in Georgia, for instance, which Joe Biden won by 11,779 votes. It’s no surprise then that Republicans have extended voter suppression attempts to votes from US citizens living outside the country, with lawsuits challenging their votes in North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

But beyond a reserve pool of votes, Americans living in other countries have something else to offer as well: a unique perspective. As a stark voter map from the 2022 French presidential election showed, voters living outside France had drastically different views on Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen from voters living in France, with only 5.3% voting for the far-right candidate in the first round (v 23% of all French voters), and 45% preferring Macron (v 28% of all French voters).

People living outside their country of citizenship might be more distanced from the internal debates raging domestically, but when they look back on their country, their judgments about what is working or not working come with the context of what’s working or not working elsewhere around the world. And perhaps because of their own geographic situation, they are less convinced by isolationist or nationalist approaches.

For the amount of impact that US elections have on the rest of the world (and Europe in particular, with Donald Trump’s adoration of Vladimir Putin, threats to leave Nato and promise to launch a mutually destructive trade war with the EU), the world beyond US borders has an undersized presence in the country’s political debate. A country of 346 million people, with only one neighbour to the north and one neighbour to the south, often sees the rest of the world as not that relevant to its own wellbeing. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

As for the Americans living abroad right now whom I know, anxiety reigns, and we’re all on edge. It shouldn’t even be close, we say to each other. Embarrassment was a feeling that departed a long time ago, giving way to just anger and trepidation. In some ways, we’re the lucky ones – we have escape routes from whatever horrors Trump 2.0 would unleash. At the same time, living outside the US tempers even the idea of an escape being a true solution, because we also see how small the world is. Too small for anyone, anywhere, to remain untouched by the consequences of an American implosion. And yet, all we can do is vote.