Sorry readers for the little hiatus there. Just got to Munich this week and started my internship. I will probably have a couple more posts but this one I wanted to relay the information I got from a meeting in Nuremberg that I attended with my employer on the importance of voting abroad for the upcoming American elections. If you are not interested tin that then stop reading now.
So a little back story, my employer is Chair of Democrats Abroad in Germany but this event was a bipartisan one and part of Vote From Abroad. The presentation was led by Kathleen Burnett, the Chair of the Democrats Abroad Munich/Bavaria. The main objective of Vote From Abroad (which is bipartisan) is to get as many of the approximately 6 million Americans abroad to vote. If all Americans abroad voted, that would be about the amount of people in Missouri just to put that into perspective.
The presentation then brought up a few points on the importance of this election. The healthcare policy is obviously a big deal. The debate on taxes is a case where America needs to decide which they they want to go but both increase and decrease in taxes could potentially work. Jobs have been a term that both parties like to throw around but the Democrats seem to have more direction on what they actually want to do as far as job creation. Foreign Affairs is another topic that seems to be in Obama's favor. Obama has been disappointing in the Environmental department but the Republicans have yet to make a platform that exploits that. Human Rights (such as to women and minorities) seems to be much more of a concern for the Democrats than Republicans.
To bring it back to voting abroad, another big reason for the need to vote abroad is the fact that less Americans in America are being able to vote because of some of the new voting restrictions such as the need of specific forms of identification. Vote From Abroad focuses on the three Federal elections (Presidential, House, Senate).
They then went over the four steps to overseas voting. Changes have been made to the process so that if you request a ballot, you can request it be sent online. You still have to manually mail your vote in but it still makes the process more efficient. Voters abroad are also reminded that they must register for ever election year individually. You are not guaranteed a ballot if you do not ask for one. There are two ways to do this. The FPCA (Federal Post Card Application) and the FWAB (Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot). FWAB should be considered a back-up to the FPCA.
To round up the presentation, they talked about the MOVE (Military & Overseas Voting Empowerment) Act. This is what made the aforementioned process easier and there are many pros to this but as stated before, the cons are the fact that you must register for every election you plan to participate in and there is a grey area amongst local elections.
After this a few people got registered on the spot and that was the day. It was very interesting to me though not at all related to my internship. If you think this information will help anyone you know, forward them this link. For more information on each organization, go to their corresponding website:
Until next time,
Daniel
I enjoyed this read ..please keep us posted.
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