A heavy investment from the Democratic National Committee had Politico asking the question “Could voters abroad hold all the cards?”
As Election Day 2024 draws near, election integrity remains a sincere concern for many Americans worried about outdated voter rolls and the potential for ballot harvesting among other issues. Now, new worries are mounting as a report detailed a six-figure investment from the left to target “nearly 9 million” voters living overseas.
Asserting the financial push was a first-of-its-kind effort by the Democratic Party in a presidential race, Politico detailed, “The Democratic National Committee and private donors are putting more than $450,000 into a get-out-the-vote campaign aimed at reaching Americans from swing states living abroad — a number the State Department puts at nearly 9 million.”
“The program includes direct advertising on traditional media and social media, billboards across Canada, mailers and in-person gatherings,” the report explained as DNC Deputy Communications Director Abhi Rahman said, “We’re going to win this election by engaging every eligible voter, no matter where they live, and our investment shows our commitment to leaving no stone left unturned.”
The Democrats’ own press release on the initiative from August contended that a population over 1.6 million was up for grabs representing the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin alone under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA).
However, the Overseas Citizen Population Analysis (OCPA) sponsored by the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), utilized to estimate the number of voters living abroad each year dating back to 2000, determined that in 2022 there were “approximately 2.8 million voting-age citizens living abroad” out of an estimated 4.4 million citizens.
The conflicting figures that saw the DNC claiming more than double the number of American citizens living abroad just two years after the FVAP report left many users on social media asserting tongue-in-cheek “Fortification to the rescue!!”
Fortification to the rescue!!
— PadrePlyo (@PadrePlyo) September 22, 2024
I bet the democrats are banking on it.
— Imjusthere (@RadicalMod77) September 21, 2024
Sounds sus AF
— Tig Tiggo (@YouAreBrainwash) September 22, 2024
Adding to concerns is the obvious bias of the facilitators of the get-out-the-vote effort as Politico cited Bruce Heyman, the co-head of the Americans Abroad effort who was the former U.S. ambassador to Canada during then-President Barack Obama’s administration and who has spoken out against Trump’s intention for mass deportation of illegal aliens.
The former ambassador indicated voters were required to follow the rules of their home states when submitting ballots from overseas while casting aside the impact Republicans could garner from targeting voters abroad.
“From all the analysis that we’ve done and seen, something like 80 percent of Americans abroad vote Democrat,” he said. “It’s because they care about foreign policy and the stature of America in the world and are very worried about a potential Trump return.”
Heyman, who with his wife Vicki were credited with raising a third of the funds being utilized by the DNC, also said with the 2020 race having been decided by mere thousands of voters across key states, “We saw in 2016 there were a lot of Americans in Canada, many of whom are Michiganders, who didn’t vote. And then we looked at other battleground border states and saw the close margins and realized voters abroad are a big factor.”
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