Have there ever been American voting stations overseas in foreign cities for expatriots (not considering US bases overseas)? I was listening to news radio this morning and it said there are five American cities with voting stations for Iraqi expatriots to vote. (No cite right now, it was radio, I’ll find something in a minute - I’m at work.) I thought that was odd. What’s the precedence for this?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/13/iraqielection.usvoting.ap/index.html
“Organizers said they expect tens of thousands of Iraqis to vote Tuesday through Thursday at polling sites around the country, including in Pomona, California; Nashville, Tennessee; and areas outside San Francisco, California; Chicago, Illinois and Washington D.C.”
They did the same thing for last year’s Iraqi elections.
I don’t know if there have ever been ex-pat polling stations for American elections; we’ve always had a fairly robust absentee-ballot system.
I’ve never heard of US voting stations outside of the country. People who are away from their normal residence on election day can vote by absentee ballot through the mail.
I think that because there are so many Iraqi citizens currently in the US they have made special accomodations for them.
The US does not have elections only for the president. Usually, you also vote for a senator, congressman, mayor, city council and various referendums and propositions. Since these vary so much, you couldn’t possibly have voting stations for Americans living overseas. Absentee ballots work so much better.
US elections are actually all run by state and local governments, which do not have diplomatic relations with foreign national governments and would have some difficulty in doing this even if they wanted to. There might well be enough Americans in, say, London to justify setting up a polling place there, but there would probably not be enough, say, Idahoans. Mail-in absentee ballots are available from all jurisdictions AFAIK, though.
Aren’t there special accomodations made for the armed services? Specifically for large and long-established military bases?
There are two polling stations in the Detroit area. They’re in the suburbs of Dearborn (the epicenter of this area’s Arabic population) and Farmington Hills.
No.
What the military does is encourage every member to contact their local board of elections early enough that an absentee ballot can be sent to them. The federal government also requires local and state election boards and the military to facilitate absentee voting by military members in numerous ways.
In presidential election years, a simplified “postcard ballot” can be sent in for the presidential election, even if an absentee ballot for other races has not been received.
The complicating factor here is that the military considers every member a resident of the home they joined from, and continues to do so until they change residency themselves. Thus, even at a large domestic base, lots of military members may be voting locally, and lots of others will be voting in numerous other locations.
Mr. Moto: Thanks, I did not know that.
Yeah, there’s no political motivation for it at all. :dubious:
It’s not only America that had polling stations for Iraqi elections. Britain had several, as did other countries. The difficulty faced was that Iraqi exiles were predominately Shia and Kurdish, the groups most persecuted by Saddam. To only allow those within post-invasion Iraq to vote would perpetuate an unnatural advantage for Sunni groups which was created by Saddam.
The US doesn’t set up voting stations abroad. Elections whether they are for President, COngress or Governor are governed by the states. I used to request my absentee ballot from my state. The embassy accepted it and took it back to the states for mailing.
As far as other countries, I can tell you that Russia sets up one voting station in Philly for the Russians here. Russia considers you citizen of the country even after you get US Citizenship. I guess Iraq’s constitution is considering Iraqi who escaped the county as being citizens. presumably, they would have to have some evidence that they were citizens of Iraq at one time.
Yes, that was more or less the case…but it was a fairly haphazard procedure. It was more important that the elections were seen to be open to all Iraqis than it was to ensure absolute accuracy in registration.
Well, it’s an election. I always assumed that politics were somehow central to those. 
I’ve actually voted in the 2004 U.S. election from abroad, and indeed, it’s all done by mail. You first contact the election board in the area where you last resided in the U.S., and they send you an absentee ballot. You fill out the ballot and return it to them. Each state has its own rules; you’re responsible for finding out what the rules are and making sure you meet the requirements.
U.S. embassies and consulates can and will help, by keeping a current record of the rules for each state and the mailing addresses for local election boards, and making generic ballot request forms available for eligible voters. But that’s as far as they may get involved.
For other democratic nations, with no federal system and a simpler elections procedure, consulates and embassies frequently serve as polling stations for citizens living or travelling abroad.
As has been mentioned, voting is pretty much a function of state and local governments and it is the responsibility of the voter to ensure that he or she asks for and fills out an absentee ballot. The feds do require under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) that states make absentee ballots easily available to miliary personnel, their families and other US citizens abroad. There’s also a federal “back up” ballot available at embassies and military bases that can be used if you applied to vote absentee but haven’t received your ballot. It only covers federal races, though.
The DOD’s Federal Voting Assitance Program administers UOCAVA and has a load of information about voting abroad.
Embassies and consulates will also take care of mailing the ballots back to the US for you. When I voted in 1996, they told me and my roommate that if the ballots are postage-paid they will take them back to the states and pop them in the mail from there. If notm we could pay the postage to them and they would take care of it. A very helpful service if you are in a country with a terribly unreliable post office.
Now whether the ballot ever made it to Ohio, I can’t say, But they did take it from me.