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| Home Front: Politix | |
| Voters from the 51st US state - we want you! | |
| 2004-06-30 | |
| EFL The 2000 Presidential election was decided by absentee votes. And so could this year’s poll. As Simon Payn reports, never before have America’s political parties wooed expat voters with such intensity. Do expats now qualify for the Jesse Jackson "Smoke Up the Vote" carton of Lucky Strikes? American expats have never felt so wanted — or so powerful. This massive surge in activity is because many people believe expats could decide the election this year. Even former Vice President Dan Quayle thinks so. He reminded the German chapter of Republicans Abroad in April how much the absentee vote (the ballot papers coming in mainly from abroad) mattered in the pivotal state of Florida in 2000. "It was the absentee votes that turned the tide in Florida. Every vote counts. We need to get the word out," he said. The 2000 vote was the closest in American history, with George W Bush gaining a margin of 537 votes in the crucial Florida count. With around six million Americans living abroad, there are enough voters to make up a 51st state. But US voters are registered in the county and state in which they last lived. And it was the absentee votes (and the way they were counted) that made the difference in the crucial states in 2000. People are just coming out of the woodwork. Can dead expats vote in Chicago? American expats here are mobilising and registering. An investigation published by The New York Times in July 2001, eight months after the poll, found that overseas ballots — the only votes that could legally be received and counted after election day — were judged by markedly different standards, depending on where they were counted.
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| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #1 I know one precinct in Indiana where that won't happen. My wife is a poll judge. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-06-30 5:09:26 PM |