ACA American Citizens Abroad

1. Background: The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986, and The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, define the rights of overseas Americans to vote in U.S. federal elections, and set out the parameters for how registration and voting by absentee ballot are to take place.
2. A Precious Right: Americans abroad are proud of their citizenship and vigilant in guarding their constitutional right to help elect their President and Members of Congress. Their right to vote is the primary means available to them to participate in the American democratic process. As was evident in November 2000, in close elections these overseas absentee votes can make the difference between victory and defeat.
3. Recent Experience: Civilian voter turnout overseas has increased steadily over the last few years, partly due to recent improvements in the laws of a number of states, and especially due to the voter information campaigns and registration drives of many different organizations of Americans abroad. Knowledge gained through participation in these efforts, and considerable feed-back from overseas voters have, nonetheless, revealed glaring shortcomings of the existing system of overseas voting and serious obstacles still faced by overseas civilian citizens in registering, casting their votes and having them counted. (See Annex 1). These problems became even more egregious in the light of the treatment of overseas voters in Florida in November 2000. Americans abroad hope that this situation will be remedied before the next federal elections in 2002.
4. Specific Problems: The following eleven problems of overseas civilian voters need to be addressed. Solutions to these problems are proposed below.
   

Problem 1: Due to the welter of differing voting rules among the 50 states, combined with the overlay of federal legislation governing overseas absentee voting, both voters abroad and those administering the present system are confused and deterred by it.

Solution: An effort should be made to harmonize the information required by each state to register to vote, and to request a ballot. This would greatly simplify the absentee voting system.

Parallel Solution: A parallel solution, for those with access to the Internet, would be to further develop the Website of the Federal Voting Assistance Program so that an overseas voter could simply insert the name of the state in which registration is desired and the requirements for that State would automatically appear on the screen in a format acceptable to that State. All the overseas voter would then need to do would be to print out the form, fill it out and send it in. Another useful refinement would be to enable voters to fill out the form on the screen directly and submit the form electronically, with the appropriate postal code number added, so that it would be sent directly to the email address of the local voting office at home.

Problem 2: Both voting assistance providers and voters are often misinformed about voting procedures leading to voter errors and causing their disenfranchisement.

Solution: Adequate funds should be made available to the federal agencies administering overseas voting to provide training to federal voting assistance officers and to volunteer assistance providers.
 
Problem 3: Local election officials may disenfranchise voters because they are uninformed or misinformed about the voting procedures now provided for overseas voters by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. This confusion is compounded by the dual nature of state and federal statutes.

Solution: Federal funding should also be made available to help train Local election officials in the operation of the UOCAVA and how overseas registration and voting is to be carried out.

Problem 4: Four states still fully require the notarization of signatures, and two others still have some residual notarization rules that do not apply to all overseas voters. Notarization is both difficult and costly abroad.

Solution: Eliminate all notarization requirements.

Problem 5: Only eight states have enabled Americans who have never lived in the U.S. to exercise their constitutional right to vote in federal elections.

Solution: Citizens who have never lived in the U.S. should be given the right to vote in all states and the District of Columbia at the legal voting residence of their parents.

Problem 6: Registration and voting is often made impossible by the lateness of many states in sending out their absentee ballots, and is exacerbated by slow foreign mail systems.

Solution: All States should be required to publish a Federal ballot which can be distributed earlier than a full State ballot. Thirty days should be the minimum interval between transmittal of ballots and the deadline for voted ballots to be received by local election officials. New methods of transmission of ballots by electronic communications should also be developed so that a ballot can be downloaded from the Internet, completed and returned by mail.

Problem 7: Fourteen states count overseas ballots received during periods of up to fifteen days following election day, usually after the results of the election have been announced but delaying the official certification of the election.

Solution: The deadline for the receipt of overseas ballots should be uniformly fixed on election day, and overseas ballots should be counted simultaneously with domestic ballots, thus ensuring that overseas votes are taken into account in the announcement of the results of the election. No voted ballots should be required to be received before the official election day.

Problem 8: APO/FPO or foreign postmarking required by some states on voted ballots is often lacking or ambiguous.

Solution: Postmark and date stamp requirements should be eliminated; dated and witnessed ballots should be accepted.

Problem 9: Voting for primary elections is usually even more difficult than voting for general federal elections due to the fact that absentee ballots are often not received at all or arrive too late.

Solution: The use of Federal Write-In Ballots should be allowed for primary elections for federal office.

Problem 10: No statistics on overseas voting exist, thereby making it impossible to measure the participation and importance of overseas voters, and to identify local obstacles to overseas voting.

Solution: Each state should be required to collect and publish data from local election officials in timely fashion regarding the number of overseas voters registered and voting as well as reasons for disqualification if the registration is denied, or a ballot is not counted. 

Problem 11 : American voters abroad wonder why they cannot vote in U.S. consulates, just as citizens of several other countries residing abroad can vote in their consulates.

Solution: A study should be undertaken to determine whether at least some U.S. consulates could be used as optional polling stations for federal elections.

CONCLUSION: ACA looks forward to working with the Congress and the Administration to find an appropriate and economically feasible manner for improving the ability of overseas Americans in the private sector to register and vote absentee in U.S. federal elections.