Trump’s attack on overseas voters is erroneous and dangerous

I do research on racist and xenophobic speech. I am also an American citizen, and have voted from overseas since 1996 (first in the UK, and now in Canada).

This makes me especially well-placed to explain why Donald Trump’s Truth Social post about overseas voters in late September and Republican efforts to undermine those voters are factually wrong and politically dangerous.

The current law giving Americans overseas the right to vote in federal elections is the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which was signed into law by Ronald Reagan, a Republican president.

The federal program to help American citizens vote while living overseas is overseen by the Department of Defense – which makes sense, given that a large number of them are members of the United States military. All of this should give pause to anyone who thinks that allowing overseas citizens to vote is some sort of left-wing conspiracy.

Complex process

Nor is it an easy matter to vote from overseas. Each state has its own process for verifying citizenship after the registration and request form reaches it, and each has its own rules that voters must follow in order for their ballots to be counted.

My own state, New Jersey, is relatively simple: I can email my registration/request form, get my ballot by e-mail, and email it back. But I must also remember to mail in the paper version of my ballot or my vote won’t count.

This is easy enough for me, from Canada or previously from the UK. But it’s much more difficult for American citizens living in places that lack reliable postal services who often have to use expensive courier services to carry out their duty as citizens.

My husband’s state is New York. He is allowed to e-mail his ballot request,