Before I started posting on Daily Kos and MyDD in February I wasn't actively involved with US politis. I knew what was going on, and tried to keep up to date as much as possible, mostly over the internet. Since February a lot has changed. I started posting on Daily Kos and MyDD and reading a lot of blogs like the Swing State Project, Americablog and the
Desert Beacon. Two weeks ago I even started my own blog called
Turn Tahoe Blue.
Due to my postings on Daily Kos I was contacted by John McQueen of Democrats Abroad. He invited me to one of their monthly meetings in Heidelberg, Germany. I was amazed at the number of people there and touched by their warm welcome.
What touched me even more was hearing firsthand of the frustrations with the current administration and the fight for their right to vote.
I arrived at the meeting Friday night, expecting maybe about a dozen people. In the end there were close to thirty. I was told that it was an unusually high turnout in a midterm election year.
Christine Schon Marques, the International Vice-Chair of Democrats Abroad came from Switzerland to Heidelberg to talk to the local members and report from the DNC meeting in New Orleans last month.
The meeting was very lively, which I liked, mostly because of frustrations with the current system of voting. You have probably read the Rolling Stones article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In it he writes among other things:
Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.
There were several people in the room who've had trouble with voting in the last election or before. The hurdles for Americans living abroad are pretty high. Unless they travel to the city they're registered in, they have to vote by absentee ballot. Therefore, they first have to request their ballot. It seems to happen a lot that ballot requests are rejected, for whatever reason. And even if overseas voters receive their ballot, they always have to contend with the postal system. If it's shortly before the election and you want to make sure your ballot arrives you may just have to invest some money and send it by FedEx.
The modern times with their Diebold machines (which was also a lively topic) also have a good side though. That is that Democrats Abroad can now organize much easier than before, voter registration and requesting ballots has also become easier.
Democrats Abroad have also started a new website for requesting your absentee ballot called Vote from Abroad.
What was quite shocking were the stories some people at the meeting were recounting. Apparently, some folks don't know that they have a right to vote when they live abroad. Some believe that they'll get in trouble for voting because they don't pay their taxes in the US (this is only half true, depends on the state and on whether it's a local or federal election). Many are simply not registered.
Overall though I left this meeting with a good feeling. The level of organization is far better than I expected. The enthusiasm about the midterms is quite high. All that needs to be done now is spread the word.
If you have friends or family abroad and you're not sure whether they're planning to vote just point them to Democrats Abroad and Vote from Abroad. There they will find pretty much everything they need to know and they can also contact the organization if they have questions or problems.
This is quite important since about 6 million Americans live abroad and their participation in close races is crucial. If the winner is determined by just a couple of hundreds or thousands of votes, as happened in several recent elections, voters from abroad can mean the difference.
John McQueen, who invited me to the meeting, writes a very good regular newsletter for the Democrats Abroad called the Wednesday Wire.
He and others were quite surprised that a German college student cares about Democratic politics to such an extent that I would write on Daily Kos and MyDD. The reason for that is that I was an exchange student on the Nevada site of Lake Tahoe 10 years ago and pretty much fell in love with it. I regularly visit my host family and am fortunate enough to consider it a second home. Because I've lived in Tahoe and care about what happens in that area I have just started a blog called Turn Tahoe Blue.
Cross posted at MyDD