Donald Trump’s attack on overseas voters is erroneous and dangerous

by Jennifer Saul, University of Waterloo

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

BREAKING!🚨 President Trump discusses possible “FOREIGN INTERFERENCE” in the upcoming election by way of Democrat overseas voter registration programs that allow individuals to register WITHOUT proof of citizenship! pic.twitter.com/OqgeoXioXW

— True the Vote (@TrueTheVote) September 23, 2024

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. Every state has its own process for verifying citizenship after the registration and request form reaches them, and each has its own rules that voters must follow in order for their ballot 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 the U.K. 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, but he must also mail a paper version of the request. And the ballot itself comes with an elaborate set of envelope templates that require precise folding — and must arrive by a strict deadline, no matter where they’re being mailed from.

The author’s husband and son fill out their mail-in ballots. (Jennifer Saul), Author provided (no reuse)

He’s a former graphic designer, and comfortable performing this task. But imagine trying to do so while suffering from arthritis or vision problems — especially when the home-printed version has tiny text. In short, there is nothing easy about voting from abroad.

So why use inflammatory language to pretend it’s an easy matter to generate many thousands of fraudulent overseas votes? One explanation would be to sow doubt about the election results. Anything that can introduce uncertainty and slow down the counting process can be exploited in an effort that could allow Trump and his allies to falsely declare him the winner on Nov. 5.

Trump’s campaign has made no secret about its plan to follow this path.

Language that suggests American citizens abroad are not really American also fits into a larger pattern of stoking divisions — and of drawing ever tighter boundaries around who would be counted as “real” Americans. This is a classic fascist power move, one that leads to a sharply defined “us,” who are worthy of moral consideration, as opposed to “them,” who are not.

Disenfranchising citizens abroad

Importantly, the movement against overseas voters is not just confined to a social media post. There are lawsuits in several states designed to disenfranchise American citizens abroad. These are citizens who may have gone to enormous lengths to carry out their duties by asking for and sending in election ballots, often at substantial personal expense and faced with substantial barriers.

Trump and his allies are working hard to prevent Americans abroad from exercising their most basic rights of citizenship. When Trump uses language that accuses overseas voters of fraud and foreign interference, it suggests we’re not really Americans.

There’s a major problem in doing so. As mentioned, a large segment of American citizens abroad are members of the U.S. armed forces. Efforts to disenfranchise Americans abroad are also efforts to disenfranchise the military.

An Allegheny County worker processes mail-in and absentee ballots in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

‘Figleaf’ language

That’s why Trump’s allegation on Truth Social that Democrats “want to dilute the TRUE vote of our beautiful military” makes no sense. This is especially true given it’s coming from someone who’s attacking the very law that allows members of the military to vote from abroad, including casting ballots for him if they’re so inclined.

This is what I call a figleaf — an additional bit of speech that provides just a bit of cover for saying something else that is much less acceptable. The allegation suggests, to someone who doesn’t understand overseas voting, that Trump somehow supports the military.

Trump’s “diluting the vote” rhetoric also plays into the deeply racist Great Replacement Theory. This theory holds that Democrats and other shadowy forces (often cast as Jewish) are plotting to replace white Americans with foreigners, in part as a way to secure electoral victory.

Overseas voting might seem like a niche issue. But overseas citizens could make all the difference in a close election. The attack on overseas voting is part of a much larger pattern of destructive suggestions from Trump about who is and is not a real American.

Jennifer Saul, Chair in Social and Political Philosophy of Language, University of Waterloo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.