GOP Intensifies Legal Challenges Against Overseas, Military Voters
With just weeks until the Nov. 5 general election, Republicans are turning their focus to overseas voters by questioning the voting eligibility of U.S. citizens living abroad, including military members and their families.
Since September, at least three lawsuits have been filed by Republican plaintiffs in battleground states over the eligibility of military and overseas voters registered under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), a federal 1986 law that grants some U.S. citizens living overseas the right to vote. Some states allow spouses or children of parents living overseas to use their residence as a voting address.
In every complaint, the plaintiffs want courts to segregate and/or reject ballots cast by voters under UOCAVA, a move that could potentially disenfranchise eligible voters. While none of the lawsuits explicitly allege that voter fraud is occurring — and one case has been rejected — attorneys for the plaintiffs have raised concerns about the potential for illegal votes to be counted.
Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president and CEO of the U.S. Vote Foundation, noted that UOCAVA has been on the books for nearly 40 years. “Suddenly it’s of great interest,” she told Democracy Docket. “Zero evidence has been put forward that anything has been done unlawfully,” she said of the lawsuits.
Pro-voting advocates and Democrats question the merit of these cases, and say the recent focus on overseas and military voters is part of a larger Republican-led strategy to flood the courts with legal challenges in an attempt to stir confusion in the electoral process.
“Plaintiffs seek to cast a cloud over the results of the 2024 election and create doubt in the minds of voters (many of whom are children of U.S. military personnel stationed overseas) about their eligibility to vote,” the Democratic National Committee said in a motion to intervene in the North Carolina case, which was granted.
In September, former President Donald Trump railed against the law, alleging without evidence that Democrats will essentially use the law to cheat. The RNC has framed the issue as an effort to secure and uphold the integrity of the 2024 election. “We want every single legal vote to be counted properly, and counting illegitimate votes dilutes that and cancels it,” an RNC official told CNN.
But advocates say the issue is political. “The partisan operatives behind this slate of lawsuits have manufactured a problem that does not exist,” said Sarah Streyder, a military spouse and overseas voter and the executive director of the Secure Families Initiative.
Streyder and other advocates spoke at a media briefing on Friday. “We are deeply concerned about the number of military voters who will be disenfranchised if these lawsuits succeed,” she said.
Republicans say overseas voters must establish residency
In essence, Republican plaintiffs are arguing that voters who can’t verify that they have lived in Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania in the period of time required to establish residency shouldn’t have their votes counted.
In the Michigan lawsuit, the RNC is challenging Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D)’s election guidance to county election clerks, which says a U.S. citizen who has never lived in the country “but who has a parent, legal guardian, or spouse who was last domiciled in Michigan is eligible to vote in Michigan as long as the citizen has not registered or voted in another state.”
The plaintiffs argue this guidance conflicts with Michigan’s constitution, which defines an eligible voter as a 21-year-old U.S. citizen “who has resided in this state six months.”
“If you’ve never resided in the United States, you’ve never resided in Michigan, perhaps there’s somewhere else to vote, but it’s not here,” GOP lawyer Brandon Debus said at a hearing last week, according to Politico. Michigan Judge Sima Patel reportedly seemed skeptical of the RNC’s case, stating that their arguments could “disenfranchise an entire group of citizens.”
On Monday, Patel rejected the RNC’s claims, and found that Benson’s guidance is “consistent with federal and state law, and the Michigan Constitution.” She also said the RNC filed the case too close to the election.
Separately, a North Carolina judge denied the RNC’s request to block the processing of ballots from certain overseas and military voters.
Dzieduszycka-Suinat, who lives overseas, suggested that the plaintiffs in these cases may not understand what living abroad entails. “Some of these people are aid workers and missionaries,” she told Democracy Docket, “and they took their family with them. They’re coming home, they’re still paying taxes. That’s who they’re disenfranchising. We’re not all here permanently,” she said.
“I have [a] daughter who votes using my former address in California,” she told Democracy Docket. “It’s a small, probably fractional, number of the overseas voters and military voters that have children born abroad who did not specifically establish residency. The issue here is not really the numbers, it’s the overall message it sends that your ballot doesn’t count, and that is hard to overcome.”
In Pennsylvania last week, a judge questioned why a group of GOP legislators waited until September to challenge the Republican secretary of state’s process for verifying the eligibility of overseas voters, the AP reported.
An attorney for the congressmen indicated the plaintiffs are concerned about illegal votes. “We don’t want votes for Iran or Russia counted,” Kaardal said. “We don’t want to participate in an election with foreign interference.”
“The reason they want to segregate those ballots is so that they can take them to court and try to get those votes thrown out,” Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley said at the Oct. 18 media briefing. “We can’t be dissuaded by this awful attempt at voter suppression.”
The future of UOCAVA
With more eyes on UOCAVA, advocates say the law could benefit from some improvements. Streyder said one example is to establish a national deadline by which absentee ballots could still arrive and be counted.
“Right now it differs by state,” she said. “About two-thirds of states (like Arizona) require that my mail ballot that’s coming from England has to get there by Election Day, not just be postmarked by Election Day. So if I put my ballot into the mail and it faces mail delivery delays that are out of my control as a voter, I could be disenfranchised through no fault of my own.”
In Pennsylvania, for example, the ballots of overseas and military voters are due no later than seven days after Election Day at 5 p.m. Some states allow ballots to be returned electronically. Pennsylvania does not.
Democratic legislators have for years sought to set nationwide standards for early and mail-in voting, which is largely regulated by states and often litigated in the courts. In the meantime, pro-voting advocates are speaking out against what they see as an attempt to further suppress the vote.
“This is such a critical right for our American citizens overseas and in the military,” former Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathryn Boockvar said last week. “And adding this doubt and intentional fueling of distrust is exactly what we don’t need. This is the kind of thing that we expect to see in dictatorships with this repression of votes, not here in America.”
Are you an overseas voter? Read more about how to cast your ballot.