Convenience Voting and Technology

The Case of Military and Overseas Voters

Claire M. Smith

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137391070
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

One of modern democracy's biggest challenges is the overseas voter.This book is the first of its kind to explore the issues of military and overseas voting, an often neglected voting bloc, by investigating the successfulness of overseas voting initiatives, technologies, and policy efforts.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: “MY POLLING PLACE IS MY LIVING ROOM”

DURING THE SUMMER OF 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama was often criticized for his lack of foreign policy experience. In response to this critique, then Senator Obama made his first major speech on the international stage in Berlin, Germany, on July 24, 2008. Approximately 200,000 people gathered at the Siegessäule (Victory Column) in Berlin to listen to Senator Obama speak about “A World That Stands as One.” Spiegel, a popular German magazine, questioned the true audience of the speech, however, and subtitled it: “People of the World, Look at Me,” which highlighted Senator Obama’s desire to raise his international profile:

The speech wasn’t truly aimed at the audience assembled at the Siegessäule. While Obama shouted the last few lines of his speech into the crowd, his handlers were already escorting the members of the press that travel with him down from the guest stands. The journalists would be given a few moments to speak with Obama. They were all Americans, all 40 of them. CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, the Chicago Sun-Times. Members of the foreign press were explicitly unwelcome. The target audience was America. Sorry, Berlin.¹

If America was Obama’s target audience, why did he choose to speak in Berlin? Certainly the speech was intended to evoke images of President John F. Kennedy’s famous Berlin speech and to establish Senator Obama’s foreign policy credentials.² However, the choice of Berlin as a debut for Senator Obama’s foreign policy did not go unnoticed by an important set of American citizens, namely the millions of Americans who live abroad. According to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, 13,730 US citizens lived in Berlin at the time of then Senator Obama’s speech and almost 96,000 in Germany in total.³ The diverse audience of Germans and Americans illustrated the important fact that Americans are not just located within the 50 states, but they are dispersed throughout the world.

The Obama Berlin speech of 2008 illustrates the emerging importance of a new type of campaign activity: American-style events, speeches, and fund-raisers held in foreign countries. These events not only generate international press but are also designed to mobilize American voters living abroad. Both parties have seized upon this type of activity. In July 2012, for example, the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a high-profile trip abroad also intended to highlight his foreign policy qualifications. Just as Obama meant to evoke Kennedy, Romney’s visit to London during the 2012 Olympics underscored Romney’s role in saving the Salt Lake City Games of 2002.⁴ However, the second stop on his international trip, Israel, was not only a potential indicator of future foreign policy goals he was also certainly looking for votes to “firm up support among Evangelicals and perhaps peel off some of the Jewish vote” (LaFranchi 2012). Romney was undoubtedly targeting not only the Jewish vote within the United States, but also the approximately 300,000 Americans living in Israel of whom about 75,000 would cast a vote in 2012 (Chabin 2012). As Curry (2012) argues, “Romney’s foreign tour is a reminder that Americans living abroad are no longer forgotten citizens in election years. They’re a source not only of votes, but of campaign funds.”

The 96,000 Americans in Germany and 300,000 in Israel are but a small fraction of the estimated 4–6 million US citizens living around the world. Americans live abroad for a variety of reasons, for example, as part of military personnel stationed abroad, as the civilian workforce, as students, or even because of personal preference. Not only do these individuals serve as informal “representatives” of the United States while living abroad, but they are also voters and political participants in their home country. In an era of ever-increasing electoral competitiveness, where “every vote counts,” the 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate trips abroad stress the importance of this voting bloc. However, understanding how many Americans live abroad, who these citizens are, what their voting process is like, and how public policy has addressed (or not addressed) their voting issues remains an understudied phenomenon, which lies at the heart of this book.

GONE BUT STILL ENGAGED

Although far from home, Americans abroad are still attached to their homeland and often seek to participate in the political process in many ways. Some choose to attend distinctly American political events, such as candidate Obama’s speech in 2008. Many continue to exercise their right to vote, and even join American political party groups established abroad, such as Democrats Abroad (DA) and Republicans Abroad International (RAI). Political parties and campaigns are beginning to recognize not only the importance of military and overseas citizens in terms of votes but also the financial potential of political contributions from overseas voters. For example, in 2012, a Romney fund-raising dinner in London required a minimum contribution of $25,000 (Curry 2012).

With elections becoming more competitive, the votes of military personnel and Americans overseas are increasingly important. For example, days before the November 2008 election, John McCain’s campaign claimed that ballots in Virginia had not been printed and sent out early enough to military and overseas voters, in violation of the 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). The law recommended that ballots to military and overseas voters be sent out 45 days before an election, and the McCain campaign subsequently sued the state of Virginia, asking the court to extend the deadline for ballot receipt to November 14, 2008 (Lewis 2008). Although McCain’s suit would not help him win the election, it is one example of the stories that continue to appear during elections involving overseas absentee voting. Even in small races, military and overseas ballots can decide the outcome of an election. In 2010 a county commissioner’s race in Maine was decided by just two ballots from military and overseas voters. Although one candidate led the race on Election Day, when the ballots from military and overseas voters were added, the opposing candidate was declared the winner (Curtis 2010).

Certainly, the most notorious case of the importance of overseas ballots in an election is the 2000 presidential election and subsequent Florida recount. On election night, George W. Bush led the vote total in Florida by 1,784 votes. After a recount, however, Bush finished only 537 votes ahead of Al Gore. An in-depth study initiated by the New York Times and led by Gary King found that the Bush legal team mounted an organized push to ensure that overseas ballots, particularly from military voters (who were thought to lean Republican), were accepted (Imai and King 2004). These ballots played a significant role in the final result, even though 680 of the ballots accepted were “flawed” and should have been rejected. As Barstow and Van Natta (2001) note:

Although Mr. Bush appeared to hold a fluctuating lead throughout the 36 days of recounts, the Website shows that without the overseas absentee ballots counted after Election Day, Mr. Gore would have won Florida by 202 votes, and thus the White House. But no one knew that until the 36 days were over; by then, it was a historical footnote.

THE DILEMMA OF MILITARY AND OVERSEAS VOTING

The United States is not the only country that has had to tackle the issue of military and overseas voters. As the global economy has expanded and more and more individuals move away from their country of citizenship, democracies are faced with a daunting challenge: managing and administering the overseas vote. In 2013, the number of global emigrants reached almost 232 million people (Migration Policy Institute 2014). Most countries began exploring the idea of voting rights for citizens abroad during World War I and World War II. This was, in part, a result of the mass movement of soldiers around the globe. Nonetheless, by the 1980s, relatively few nations, including Spain and the United States, had enacted national legislation to address the issue. Most countries did not begin providing voting rights to citizens located outside their borders until the beginning of the twenty-first century.

As of 2007, roughly 115 countries provided overseas citizens with some form of voting rights (IDEA 2007). Countries have provided a variety of options for enabling citizens abroad to exercise the right to vote. These range from in-person voting at a designated embassy or other location, through postal voting, to electronic voting. In 2007, 54 countries used in-person voting, 25 opted for postal voting, and only Estonia and the Netherlands used some form of Internet voting (IDEA 2007, 23–24). Most countries place restrictions on voting by citizens abroad, with 14 countries denying voting rights to those who have been abroad for an extended period. For example, the United Kingdom provides voting rights only to citizens who have been away from the country for less than 15 years (20). Recent research demonstrates that these restrictive policies depress the voter turnout of these countries’ overseas populations (Lafleur 2011). The primary explanation for the extension of voting rights in some countries (but not others) is electoral competition (Rhodes and Harutyunyan 2010; Lafleur 2011). That is, a political party will be more sympathetic to the cause of overseas citizen voting rights if they believe it will benefit their party.

For Americans, those US citizens who live abroad and choose to participate in elections are confronted by procedural roadblocks that make voting from overseas exceedingly difficult. The voting process for American military and overseas voters is long and filled with many points of potential failure along the way; among the most important is the sheer physical distance between most overseas voters and their local election official who must send and process their ballots.

Congress has passed many important pieces of legislation in response to the unique problems of military and overseas voters, the most current of which is the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) passed in 1986, which was amended by the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act in 2009. UOCAVA remains the primary legislation affecting military and overseas citizens, as well as the legal basis for their voting rights. UOCAVA covers

1. all uniformed services members voters who, by reason of active duty, are “absent from the place of residence where the member is otherwise qualified to vote”;

2. members of the US Merchant Marine absent from their voting jurisdiction;

3. the spouses and dependents of uniformed services members and Merchant Marine; and

4. “persons who reside outside the United States and qualified to vote in the last place in which they were domiciled before leaving the United States.”⁵

The term UOCAVA voter is used interchangeably in this book to refer to military and overseas voters, and the term domestic voter refers to an individual living within the continental United States. Although UOCAVA provided states with a minimum set of election administration guidelines and recommendations, states have traditionally had a great measure of leeway when implementing election policy. This book demonstrates how this flexibility, combined with US federalism, resulted in a myriad of state regulations throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

Another key piece of legislation is the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 designed and passed by Congress to address many of the difficulties that emerged during the troubling 2000 presidential election. The law contained several important changes to the military and overseas voting process. For example, for the first time, states were required to collect and publish statistics on UOCAVA voters, and changes were made to regulations about the acceptance and rejection of absentee ballot requests (Alvarez, Hall, and Roberts 2007, 967).

Despite UOCAVA, HAVA, and the ensuing state-level efforts to improve the voting process, military and overseas voters continued to have problems participating in elections, which were well documented in 2008. In 2008, the lengthy UOCAVA voting process was extremely time consuming and could take anywhere from two weeks to two and a half months to complete (Pew 2009, 40). In May 2009, Gail McGinn, the acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, reported to the US Committee on House Administration that a Congressional Research Service analysis of data from seven states found that 28 percent of military and overseas ballots were described as not returned, rejected, or returned as undeliverable (McGinn 2009).⁶ Furthermore, in 2009, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) reported that 39,533 military and overseas ballots were rejected in the 2008 presidential election, with the most common reason given for rejecting a UOCAVA ballot being a missed deadline (44 percent of all ballots rejected) (US Election Assistance Commission 2009, 2). In its 2008 Post-Election UOCAVA Survey Report and Analysis, the Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) reported that more than half (52 percent) of those who tried but could not vote were unable to do so because their ballots were late or never arrived (OVF 2009, 5).

In light of the continuing problems experienced by military and overseas voters, policy-makers and activists continued to develop and fine-tune policy in hopes of improving the voter success rate, and in 2009 the Senate passed the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE) Act. OVF (2011) identified three core components to the MOVE Act: “(1) technology, such as the mandatory use of electronic technology to transmit election materials to military and overseas voters, including the electronic delivery of blank ballots and electronic ballot tracking systems, and (2) communications, such as online communication with UOCAVA voters including websites and email correspondence, and (3) election administration, such as the distributions of blank ballots to voters 45 days prior to Election Day” (OVF 2011, 4, emphases added). According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), this legislative activity at the national level was also reflected at the state level, and, by December 2009, 2,344 election bills related to election policy and procedures had been introduced in state legislatures, with 225 of them being enacted (NCSL 2009).

All of this legislative movement gives rise to the central question of this book: Does policy, specifically voting legislation, matter? Has military and overseas voter turnout increased as a result of legislation? What barriers still exist to voting? What policy changes can be made to promote military and overseas voting? How have voter attitudes and satisfaction with the voting process changed?

While numerous studies have shown that altering election laws has not had a consistently significant influence on domestic voter turnout in the United States (see, for example, Rugeley and Jackson 2009; Larocca and Kemanski 2011), the research on military and overseas voters is thin and provides little direction. As of September 2008, Hall (2008) identified less than five academic studies directly addressing the concerns of these voters (ii). One of the largest shortcomings of these studies, and indeed a hurdle to further research, has been the absence of reliable data on the military and overseas voting experience (iii, iv). In fact, much of the current UOCAVA literature attempts to document the frequency and nature of the problems confronted by voters, such as reports by the US General Accounting Office (GAO) (or see, for example, Alvarez, Hall, and Roberts 2007). Additional studies explore and describe technology pilot programs or make policy recommendations (e.g., Regenscheid and Hastings 2008; Skaggs 2009).

Only a few studies have attempted to gauge and measure the attitudes of UOCAVA voters. For example, a 2001 GAO report indicates that the variety of state and local requirements, lack of feedback from election officials, and time constraints worried military and overseas voters the most (GAO 2001, 3). In 2007, with the help of OVF, the EAC conducted a survey in order to investigate the UOCAVA voting experience, as well as attitudes toward electronic voting methods. In their analysis of the EAC data, Cain, MacDonald, and Murakami (2008) found that overseas civilians found it more difficult to register than military voters. All voters voiced concerns about getting their ballots on time.

Unfortunately, none of these inquiries into military and overseas voting systematically develops and tests hypotheses regarding the effects of public policy. Also, the majority of studies focuses on one aspect of the voting process, such as the “time line of voting” (e.g., Pew 2009), and fails to consider the entire voting process. Furthermore, the current literature is limited in its compariso...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• List of Important Abbreviations and Acronyms
• 1. Introduction: “My Polling Place Is My Living Room”
• 2. Who Are UOCAVA Voters?
• 3. The Development of Military and Overseas Voting Rights in the United States
• 4. Evaluating Voting Policy Success: Aggregate Outcomes
• 5. Evaluating Voting Policy Success: Voter Satisfaction
• 6. Defending Votes: The Unique Problems of Military Voters
• 7. Voting Technology, Security, and Privacy Concerns
• 8. The Future of Convenience Voting for Overseas and Domestic Voters
• Appendix I: Chronology: Significant Events in the Development of Military and Overseas Voting
• Appendix II: Changes in Electronic Transmission Methods and Voting Outcomes, 2012 Versus 2008
• Notes
• References
• Index