Donald Trump claimed without evidence this week that anyone living abroad can receive a ballot in the mail even if they are ineligible to vote, falsely accusing Democrats of subverting a 1986 law to win in November.
The former Republican president’s accusation centers on the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which protects the rights of U.S. citizens living abroad, including military members and their families, to vote by mail in federal elections. UOCAVA was amended in 2009 by the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE), which added more protections.
Trump claimed that Democrats “will use UOCAVA to receive ballots, a program that sends ballots abroad by email without requiring citizenship or identity verification” and that “everyone can get a ballot by email.” -Mail can be sent!” Trump also suggested that this could indicate “foreign interference” in the 2024 election.
“Democrats talk about how hard they are working to get millions of votes from Americans living abroad,” he posted on his platform Truth Social on Monday. “Actually, they are preparing to CHEAT!”
This latest accusation builds on similar election-related falsehoods that Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly spread since the 2020 campaign — for example, that non-citizens are voting en masse or that ballot drop boxes facilitate voter fraud.
Experts say the goal is to ramp up the conversation and sow doubt about the U.S. electoral system in the event Trump doesn’t win.
“These types of false claims are typical of the broader disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about the security of our elections and are sure to continue,” said Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, executive director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education. “It’s a pretty obvious playbook at this point, which is why people need to be very critical of the news they receive about elections and that they need to contact their election officials for reliable information.”
Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Local election officials, contrary to Trump’s claims, are verifying the identity and eligibility of those who register to vote by mail abroad, just as they would anyone living in the United States
Individuals register and request ballots by sending a Federal Postal Card Application (FPCA) to the election office in their voting state of residence – often to the address where they last lived in the United States. You must submit the FPCA every year to receive mail-in ballots for all elections held during that period.
All voters, including those abroad, must certify under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens when signing their registration form. A 1996 US law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections. Violations can be punished with a fine or a prison sentence of up to one year. They can also be deported.
When local election offices receive an FPCA, they verify the registrant’s identity, usually using their driver’s license, state ID, or Social Security number. Federal law requires states to regularly maintain their voter rolls and to remove from office anyone who is ineligible to vote.
“Elections are administered by state and local election offices that process absentee vote registrations and ballot applications, send ballots to voters, and receive and process cast ballots,” said Scott Wiedmann, the director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, which administers UOCAVA. “Election officials are the final arbiter of whether a voter meets the voting requirements in their jurisdiction.”
Eligible voters receive a blank postal ballot paper before each election and can ask how they would like to send it, including by email. Foreign voters can take part in federal elections at any time. Some states may also allow them to vote in state and local elections.
According to the latest data from the Federal Voting Assistance Program, about 4.4 million U.S. citizens lived abroad in 2022. About 2.8 million of those people were of voting age. An estimated 94,927 votes were cast by this demographic in the 2022 general election. That number was higher in the last presidential election in 2020, when 224,139 votes were cast by about 2.5 million voting-age citizens.
“In over 25 years of working in elections, in both Republican and Democratic administrations and with election officials of both parties, I cannot recall a time when either party or any elected leader of either party ever denigrated this essential program. until Trump did it.” “We made false claims this week,” said David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Becker added, referring to UOCAVA, that “every candidate and every campaign knows of the law’s existence, and then-President Trump’s administration monitored its enforcement throughout his term in office.”
Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, agreed that “making sure these voters can vote has never been controversial. I would say never before.”
Although research shows that non-citizen voting has occurred throughout the United States over the years, it is extremely uncommon, in part because of the risk involved.
States have mechanisms in place to prevent this, although there is not a single standard protocol that they all follow. Valencia Richardson, voting rights counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told The Associated Press in July that there are many ways to confirm citizenship, such as checking motor vehicle records, making a request to the State Department or contacting the voter themselves.
A miniature number of local jurisdictions, including San Francisco and the District of Columbia, have begun allowing noncitizen immigrants to run in some local contests, such as for school board and city council.
False claims like Trump’s build on existing fears of voter fraud and illegal immigration while capitalizing on distrust of the media and the public’s lack of familiarity with election laws.
“Laying the groundwork for a conspiracy theory requires linking many claims together,” Kathleen Carley, a misinformation expert and researcher at Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, wrote in an email. “In that sense, this story about UOCAVA lays the foundation for and would help support a conspiracy theory surrounding Democratic election theft.”
