Every vote counts: Americans living abroad could have big impact on elections

By Diane Ako

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    PARIS, France (KITV) — Nearly three million U.S. citizens living abroad can vote absentee in federal elections, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program. While that’s only a fraction of the roughly 244 million Americans eligible to vote in 2024, political analysts say in a presidential race this tight, every vote could matter.

Island News went to Europe to talk to Hawaii residents living there, who say they will definitely cast their ballot this November.

European resident Guy DeConte splits his time between homes in Paris and Antwerp. He and his husband moved here ten years ago, but they’ve always kept tabs on politics in his home country of America. “It was always important to us and not physically living in the United States, it seems something important to keep tabs on,” said the Kamehameha Kapalama graduate.

The former Hawaii Kai resident says he is deeply concerned about the fate of this country. “It seems the past maybe eight years has become so divisive and also just split, like variations of what people seem to want are so divergent. In order to keep our voices loud, we need to vote,” DeConte asserted.

Kamehameha Kea’au graduate Lea Wery is another American overseas. The Hawaii Island native is spending a university year abroad in Amsterdam. “I just feel that as the new generation, it’s super important for us to vote, have our voices be heard, and have a say in the future of our world and what’s going on today,” she explained.

Can so relatively few votes matter? Political analyst and former US diplomat Patrick Branco says, it sure can. Just one example: “When you look at the 2000 election, President Bush versus Al Gore, it was a margin of 1,700 votes. After the election night, these votes were still tallied to determine who actually won the presidential election,” he recalled.

“The other example is in 2018, Kyrsten Sinema versus Martha McSally in Arizona. Kyrsten Sinema only won by a narrow margin after those votes were counted from overseas.”

DeConte, an avid political watcher who’s been voting since he was 18, knows that. He added, “Hawaii is one of the last states to actually get counted. By that time, the elections, especially the general elections like [for] the president, has already been decided. I think [Hawaii] might have one of the lowest, if not the lowest voter turnouts in the nation for that reason. You think it doesn’t matter, but it does matter because I think every vote counts, as cliche as that sounds.”

He definitely plans to make his voice heard through his vote.

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