With a close race looming in November, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is investing big dollars in the global hunt for votes from Americans living abroad. But will these votes be protected from the vulnerabilities of the overseas voting system?
In an announcement last month, the DNC revealed a $300,000 commitment to Democrats Abroad, the “official Democratic Party arm” in charge of “mobilizing the overseas vote,” according to its website.
DNC Executive Director Roger Lau explained the decision in a statement, saying “[t]his election will be won on the margins, and every single vote counts.” He claimed this “innovative investment in Democrats Abroad” aims to “register and earn the votes of the nearly 9 million Americans living and serving overseas,” and that “Democrats are leaving nothing to chance.”
That’s a huge number of voters, and it contradicts a 2022 analysis from the Defense Department’s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), which claims that “of the estimated 4.4 million” U.S. citizens living overseas, only about 2.8 million of them are of voting age.
In a November 2023 study from The Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO), Doris L. Speer, AARO president, says her organization “found six estimates of the number of Americans living overseas, some widely divergent.” Specifically addressing the claim that 9 million citizens live abroad, Speer notes the number is based on a State Department estimate that “is said to count all Americans outside the U.S. for any reason, including tourists, not Americans living abroad” (emphasis original).
According to Speer,
