The U.S. Presidential Election and the American Overseas Voter

One of the perks of living overseas is that we vote by absentee ballot a month or so in advance of a presidential election and can then tune out of the news for most of October and get on with our lives.

Not that we tune out completely, of course. Partisan chatter is for better or worse—mostly for worse—right at our fingertips. But in voting 30-45 days prior to the election, as Americans abroad are advised to do, we have taken ourselves off of the rolls of the undecided and don’t have to worry about car failure, heart failure or weather issues on Election Day. I imagine that only a tiny percentage of non-military overseas voters (and I’m speaking of civilians here) come from battleground states anyway (as American voters living overseas we vote in the state where we last resided), but I suppose that, sigh, is another matter.

Therefore, most election news, particularly once the party conventions are over, is of little use to expatriates in casting their vote. Even the debates are post-partum of the ballot. The main use of partisan gotchas, for those who wish to relay them, is to taunt our loved ones (possibly soon to be formerly loved ones), to explain to them why they or their spouses are raving idiots, and mostly to preach to the choir.

What passes for news in the final two months of recent American presidential election is comprised largely of sound bites and spin (“what he really meant was…”), over-analysis, horserace commentary, hoping that the opposition will make a major blunder or inventing one anyway, and arguments by people who want to let you know that a vote for one guy is a vote for America and a vote for the other guy is a vote for evil, or at least incompetence.

It’s easy to get caught up in this whether you’ve already voted or not. However, even prior to casting their ballot overseas voters are less subject to the sound bites and to the negative advertising; overall, we see and hear less of it (unless it’s our job or we take it upon ourselves to churn it out or to relay it) and so have an easier time tuning it out.

Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, President of the of the non-partisan Overseas Vote Foundation wrote to me this week in response to a question about American voters abroad, “My sense is that overseas voters benefit from a bit of distance when considering who they will vote for as it allows them make a thoughtful decision with less influence of propaganda and advertising from either side.”

Some might say that makes us more informed, but I don’t think of it as a question of more or less informed as much as less aggressively informed at in a partisan way. We don’t walk into a grocery store and hear a notoriously left-leaning or right-leaning radio station or cable channel berating the enemy. We don’t get automated calls kindly explaining the best way to vote. We don’t see signs in our neighbors’ yards promoting one candidate or another.

We can of course get a good dose of trash talk anytime we want through Facebook and Twitter, but we generally receive that in a private setting, meaning that we can turn it off. (As a side note, I saw from my small sampling on Facebook that when Romney’s “47% percent” became news my in-your-face Republicans “friends” were suddenly busy getting their kids ready for school, and when Obama failed to hit the mark after the first presidential debate the in-your-face Democrats “friends” became keenly aware of the beautiful fall weather. Both camps quickly regrouped of course.)

I don’t know of any large-scale polling about party preferences of overseas and neither did the president of the Overseas Vote Foundation (the reason for the e-mail correspondence noted above). (Please send any such poll if you know of one, keeping in mind that the annual poll at Harry’s Bar in Paris does not count.) It’s commonly heard that members of the military tend towards Republicans and non-military expats tend toward Democrats but I’m not aware of any reliable data showing that.

A BBC opinion poll recently revealed non-American nationals in 21 countries around the world would massively prefer Obama. That might be taken as an important indicator of how the world views or wishes to view the United States, but is clearly unimportant for individual voters at home. The United States, as all states, acts out of self-interests, so it’s only natural that American voters approach our own election from a different angle.

While it’s important, given America’s role in the world, to understand why the world has been so wary of Republican presidential candidates over the past decade, it’s a bit like asking Christians whether or not Muslim women should be required to cover their hair or asking the British whether or not Koreans should use chili peppers in their food or asking Americans whether or not Russians should celebrate Halloween—not so important when making a decision based in your own self-interest (i.e. your vote).

I therefore found it a bit shocking to learn that for this election an organization seeking to get out the American vote in Israel took as their slogan “Vote Israel.” Just imagine if dual nationals in other countries were to organize the get-out-the-vote campaigns with slogans such “Vote Venezuela” or “Vote India” or “Vote Ukraine.” Pity the American in Tehran going to the “Vote Iran” meeting; he’ll never get off the no-fly list. Living in Paris, I even imagine that going an American “Vote France” event would get me in trouble.

No, probably not, since Americans outside of France already assume that I “vote France” or that I vote like a Frenchman. For Americans living within the United States, overseas voters who disagree with them are unduly influenced by where they live. Allow me to modify that: people who live in another region or state or country from where you live will inevitably see you as unduly influenced by where you live. I modified that because I just remembered hearing an odd bar conversation in Paris in September in which an American living in London was telling an American living in Paris that the latter’s views on the election were skewed because he lived in Paris. “Well, you live in London!” said the American Parisian. “Yeah, and they speak English there!” said the American Londoner. Admittedly, there was drinking involved. (For a related vignette that I’ve written on the subject click here.)

Anyway, we already have polarized blue states and red states to tell us that we are influenced (unduly or not isn’t the question) by where we live. My sister told me that her stock broker said that voting for a certain candidate would be good for her portfolio—now that’s undue influence.

Americans have one national electoral event every four years whereby we can vote an individual and a party in or out of office. (Other democracies may hold national referenda, for example, or a parliament can cause a government to fall). Yet even then we have an electoral system whereby one New Yorker’s vote can cancel another New Yorker’s vote but cannot cancel a Texan’s vote. Were the New Yorker to say to the Texan, “You say that because you live in Texas,” the Texan could rightly say, “Hell yeah!”

As overseas voters we can all say “Hell yeah!” too as we hopefully vote—voted—America.

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