“This election will be won on the margins, and with only three months until the election, every vote matters,” the DNC investment announcement states. “In what will be a close election, the DNC is leaving no stone left unturned to ensure that Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States.” //

DNC Executive Director Roger Lau explained the decision in a statement, saying “[t]his election will be won on the margins, and every single vote counts.” He claimed this “innovative investment in Democrats Abroad” aims to “register and earn the votes of the nearly 9 million Americans living and serving overseas,” and that “Democrats are leaving nothing to chance.”

That’s a huge number of voters, and it contradicts a 2022 analysis from the Defense Department’s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), which claims that “of the estimated 4.4 million” U.S. citizens living overseas, only about 2.8 million of them are of voting age. //

As a correspondent for the election integrity group Michigan Fair Elections (MFE), I talked with MFE Chair and Founder Patrice Johnson, who told me her theory: “They appear to be citing 9 million to set expectations and nurture public acceptance of that number, despite the federal government indicating only 2.8 million voting-aged citizens reside overseas,” she suggests. //

“Many” states also “allow citizens who have never resided in the U.S.” to vote using a parent’s address, according to FVAP. The lax requirements lead activists like Johnson to fear that UOCAVA could “open[] the door to unlimited foreign voting with no verification of residency or citizenship.”