Every vote counts – even overseas

NEW YORK – When decision time comes this fall, the real swing votes in the presidential election may not come from Pennsylvania, Ohio or even Florida. The ultimate Kerry-Bush battleground may turn out to be somewhere more far-flung and unexpected – Israel, Britain, even Indonesia.

And both political camps say they are getting ready for the fight, courting American voters who are living overseas and taking no chances that their votes will undermine them at the finish line.

Although an official census never has been taken, between 4 million and 10 million American citizens are believed to be living abroad. Those over age 18 are entitled to have their absentee votes counted in the state where they last lived – no matter how long ago that was. And many are planning to do just that.

“There’s enormous interest abroad because the whole of the world depends on the result,” said Phyllis Earl, 72, who lives in Britain and has not voted in a U.S. election since 1956, two years after she moved overseas.

Overseas voters are considered particularly important this year. Polls suggest razor-thin margins in several battleground states, and votes coming in from abroad – a dozen here, a score there – could tip the balance.

Contrary to widespread belief, it more likely was American voters in Israel – not Florida – who put George W. Bush in the White House four years ago, a phenomenon that has John Kerry’s supporters in Israel vowing to do whatever it takes to make certain that doesn’t happen again in November.

Kerry’s sister Diana speaks several languages and has been using them all in campaign swings throughout Europe. Sharon Manitta, spokeswoman for the group Democrats Abroad, said Kerry supporters have been active in “overseas outreach efforts” in Europe, Indonesia, Mexico and even Iran. In 2000, the organization had 30 overseas chapters; now it has a presence in 73 countries, including an Iraq chapter called Donkeys in the Desert.

Bush, too, has advocates chasing the overseas vote on his behalf, according to Ryan King, deputy director of Republicans Abroad, which has chapters in 50 countries. Among those crossing the oceans for Bush this fall are former Vice President Dan Quayle and George P. Bush, son of the president’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

“Be an expatriate patriot,” says an ad planned by Republicans Abroad. It also quotes former President Reagan: “We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.”

After Labor Day, Republicans Abroad also plans campaign ads on the president’s behalf in the International Herald Tribune and in Stars and Stripes, a newspaper with wide distribution among the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 U.S. military personnel serving abroad.

Those who doubt that Americans living abroad could tip the balance in November might consider this: Various ballot chads aside, Al Gore received 202 more votes than George W. Bush did on Election Day 2000 in Florida. Only after all the overseas votes had been counted, including more than 12,000 from Israel alone, was Bush’s election victory certified. His margin was 537 votes in Florida.

In 2000, according to King, Israel was one of the keys to Bush’s success. No other foreign country’s U.S. citizens contributed more to Bush’s narrow Florida victory, he said.

Harvard professor Gary King, co-compiler of a survey analyzing Florida’s overseas vote in 2000, says he has no doubt that Americans living overseas gave Bush his victory four years ago. And while it’s unclear whether the vote from Israel alone was enough to put Bush over the top, 185,000 U.S. citizens live there.

Mark Zober, chairman of Democrats Abroad in Israel, said he has no firm figures but estimates that roughly 100,000 Americans in Israel are eligible to vote in the upcoming U.S. election and that roughly 14,000 were registered in 2000.

But how could Israeli Jews give Bush his margin of victory when Jewish Democrats outnumber Jewish Republicans by a wide margin in the United States?

Both Zober and Ryan King think they know the answer.

Zober says he has little doubt that the Jewish vote in New York state heavily favored Gore. But in the 2000 presidential election, Zober points out, it made no difference how Americans from New York living in Israel voted. All that mattered was how those from Florida cast their ballots.

Israel is home to roughly 6,000 former Floridians – who tend to be more conservative than Jewish voters in New York and many of whom voted for Bush in the last election, Zober says.

In addition, he said in a telephone interview from his office in Tel Aviv, many American-Israelis who might have voted for Gore if they had been living in the United States voted for Bush because they considered him an unflinching supporter of Israel.

Once in Israel, Jewish voters no longer are guided by a presidential candidate’s position on domestic issues, Zober said. Instead, he said, they vote for whoever they think will serve Israel’s interests. Even this year, Zober said, many American-Israelis still are inclined “to vote for the devil they know instead of the one they don’t.”

No statistics exist to predict definitively whether Americans in Israel will play such an important role this November. But Marc Zell, chairman of Republicans Abroad’s Israel chapter, is taking no chances.

Zell said his group has about 150 volunteers who aggressively started registering potential Bush voters a few months ago. As the election nears, he said, they will be holding “parlor sessions” in their homes to discuss Bush’s support for Israel and probably will take out pro-Bush ads in Israel’s English-language newspapers.

The Democratic group, meanwhile, is hoping to convince American-Israelis that their adopted home is no safer today than before the war in Iraq and that Kerry is no less a friend to Israel than Bush is.

Israel is hardly the only country Kerry and Bush supporters are turning to for votes. Registration drives are under way in countries across Europe, Asia and Latin America. And in Britain, home to an estimated 224,000 American citizens, voter interest is greater than ever, according to Democrats and Republicans alike.

Timothy Spangler, who heads Britain’s branch of Republicans Abroad, said chief Bush political adviser Karl Rove has come to London on the president’s behalf, as have Jeb Bush and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. This fall, Republicans Abroad plans to send representatives to register voters at businesses that employ many Americans.

Democrats in Britain are doing much the same thing, registering Americans who have been living there for decades as nonvoters. Manitta said her group has set up a booth outside a movie house in Salisbury, about 85 miles southwest of London, to register potential Kerry voters leaving Michael Moore’s film, “Fahrenheit 9/11.”