Both Parties Homing In on the Expatriate Vote

When John F. Kerry’s sister, Diana, passed through Mexico City this week, she came not to visit the pyramids at Teotihuacan or the Frida Kahlo House, but to help register expatriate voters, a key and perhaps decisive source of electoral strength in this year’s presidential election.

Motivated in part by Republican claims that ballots from abroad tipped the scales in Florida for George W. Bush in 2000, the Democrats are making a stronger push to register voters in foreign countries this year.

Diana Kerry, a 57-year-old Boston schoolteacher who is working on her brother’s campaign, has a central role in the effort.

“I’m here to encourage Americans living in Mexico to vote, to make sure everyone who has the right to vote knows how to exercise it,” she said during a reception and absentee registration drive held at a private residence in Mexico City.

Before Mexico, she visited Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany to rally support.

No one knows for sure how many Americans live abroad -- estimates range from 3 million to 7 million -- or how many of them are eligible to vote. Diana Kerry estimated that as many as 3 million potential voters live in foreign countries.

Democrats Abroad, the party’s international voter registration wing, is placing a particular emphasis on Mexico, believed to be home to the most U.S. expatriate retirees, workers and students, followed by Canada and the United Kingdom. Estimates of Americans living here vary wildly: the U.S. Embassy places the number at 385,000 and Democrats say it is 1 million.

In an election that could prove a cliffhanger, expatriates represent a key pool to tap into because of their notoriously low participation rate in previous presidential elections -- partly because of the complexities of absentee balloting. Some experts estimate the percentage of eligible U.S. expatriates who voted in the 2000 presidential election was as low as 30%, far less than the overall 51.3% turnout among eligible voters overall.

“With this year’s election bound to be close, it’s a significant pool,” said Jim Brenner, a Kerry campaign operative who was with the candidate’s sister in Mexico.

Expatriates that Diana Kerry mixed with at the reception here Thursday included Jeanne Smith, 74, a New York City native and apparel factory owner who has lived in Mexico for four decades but has never filed an absentee ballot.

That will change this year, she said, after Kerry campaign workers guided her through the absentee ballot application before the reception.

She was among 30 American expatriates who registered to vote Thursday.

“I just never thought it was that important,” said Smith, when asked why she previously didn’t vote. “Now, I do. I think we need to make a change.”

The Republican National Committee is hoping to register 3 million new voters by the election, a figure that includes a significant number of expatriates, said RNC spokeswoman Christine Iverson in Washington. She declined to say how many U.S. residents abroad are being targeted.

“Every voter is important in this election whether they live at home or abroad,” Iverson said. “The first step is reaching out at home and the next step is now beginning, the process of reaching out to voters who live abroad.”

Among the Republicans’ emissaries in rallying expatriate voters is former Vice President Dan Quayle, who in April told a group of Americans living in Berlin that expatriates’ absentee ballots made the difference for President Bush in 2000 and could provide the winning margin this year.

Quayle was referring to Republicans’ claim of a 5,700-vote net advantage in absentee ballots over Al Gore in Florida, a state that Gore lost by 537 votes.

Before now, absentee voters as a bloc have not been courted as much as they could, said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a Washington public interest group.

“So far in the campaigns, interest by the parties in expatriates has been slight, with the focus on election reform, the fight over voting machines and purge lists. But it will rocket up the list as election day approaches,” Chapin said.

Military personnel stationed overseas tend to vote in far higher numbers than civilians, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program. About 69% of uniformed service members voted in 2000, up 5% from 1996.

Marshaling nonmilitary foreign votes has proved difficult because of the often-confusing absentee ballot process.