MSNBC - The Weekend - October 12, 2024
Interview with U.S. Vote Foundation President and CEO, Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat
MSNBC Moderators: Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez, and Michael Steele
Alicia Menendez: When we talk about how every vote will count in the battleground states, those include votes cast by Americans who are living abroad. There are about 1.6 million people living overseas from seven swing states. And Republicans are hell-bent on making it harder for their votes to be counted.
Republicans have filed lawsuits in Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania challenging the legitimacy of ballots cast from citizens abroad, including, get ready for this, military members. But state election officials and voting rights groups are pushing back against those suits.
Joining us now from Germany, Susan Suinat, the president and CEO of the U.S Vote Foundation and founder of Overseas Vote.
Michael Steele: Susan, welcome. It is so good to see you. And for disclosure for our audience, I chair the U.S. Vote Foundation, a nonprofit, a nonpartisan organization that is solely focused on getting voters information about their rights to vote. And Susan, this issue around voting here at home, is crazy and gnarly and difficult, at times. We see that.
People often times don't realize we have a lot of Americans who live abroad and who work abroad, our servicemen and women are serving on foreign soil. There is an estimated 4.4 million U.S citizens that lived abroad in 2022 and about 2.8 million of them were 18 years or older. The U.S Vote Foundation's work to keep voters abroad informed and engaged and reassured their votes will count is an important part of that work.
How does that play out, particularly in this environment, where seemingly, the Republican party, my party, unfortunately, are out there attacking overseas voters?
Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat: Well, I guess it's no surprise that disinformation would sweep up new groups of voters this year. I guess I was a bit surprised to see it would actually extend to our U.S troops and their families, who vote when they are away from their domicile, whether that’s within the U.S. or outside of it. And to U.S. overseas citizens. Let me emphasize the fact we are U.S citizens and we do carry the right to vote. It is codified into Federal law and we plan on voting this year.
There has been a lot of attention on the overseas vote this year because it is completely “un-optimized”. There are so many overseas voters out there and military voters and their families who have the right to vote who actually haven't taken advantage of that. The turnout rate is less than 8%, even in the best of years.
So there has been concerted effort upon it to bring out more of the overseas vote. We welcome this attention. In fact, I need to thank you for covering this very important topic that has brought with it some scrutiny. But, we're ready.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Susan, I just want to give folks some of the numbers you just mentioned. Absentee voting deadlines have loomed for troops and their families. This specifically about three fourths of the 1.4 million active-duty members are eligible to vote by absentee ballot because they are stationed away from their voting residence. In addition, their families can vote by absentee ballot.
Then you have this reporting from Newsweek saying Americans living abroad could actually swing key states. It notes Joe Biden won Georgia in the 2020 presidential election by only 11,779 votes, we all know that number. A substantially smaller number than the 18,475 overseas votes counted for the state. They cite Arizona, Biden won the state by a little over 10,000 votes and then there are 18,435 overseas votes that were counted. More numbers from North Carolina.
So this is, I think the increased attention is because there are some in this country, I want to be very specific, disproportionately, members of the Republican party apparatus who feel as though more voters means they could potentially not do as well.
But I just, I think that, you know, there are Republicans that are registered abroad, right? There are Independents and yes, there are Democrats and so this effort to essentially disenfranchise these voters isn't just hurting one particular party. It is hurting voters across the political spectrum.
Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat: That is such a good point. We are as diverse a population as the U.S based population. We are students studying abroad, traveling people, retirees abroad, working people, those who are serving our country in the military and as diplomats, missionaries, aid workers. We are all over the map.
And the mistake made in the math there is to assume that the votes that come in from overseas or military members are all from one specific party. They are not.
I mean, it is nice to see that we are all more aware of the fact that the overseas vote could come in in greater numbers, we have yet to see any proof of that. We hope that this year will be better for the added attention that has been given to it and the increased outreach. That would be a first.
I can understand some people have their knickers in a twist because they think we are going to get an avalanche of ballots from abroad. But that has yet to be seen. I hope it does happen. But again, wishful thinking.
Alicia Menendez: Michael, I want to kick this over to you really quickly, I’m not sure if you saw this headline from Media Matters about a conspiracy theory about overseas voting spread from an election denial website to Trump and now to the MAGA media infrastructure. It is falling in with their many conspiracies and lies about how there is cheating that is on the brink of happening.
Michael Steele: That is exactly right. Susan, speak to us, if you could, speak to us real quickly about the Uniform and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act which is now the center of Donald Trump and Republicans' attack against overseas voting. What is it very quickly and what is the impact of these attacks?
Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat: It's important to remember that voting absentee within the military started way back in the Civil War. It was first codified around the time of the Second World War. And then subsequent legislation followed in 1955, 1975 and then, under the Reagan administration in 1986 the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, UOCAVA, a big vocabulary word for some. That came into being. And we still operate under it. It has been amended and even improved since then but largely, this is our law.
I think, hey, open season, I guess. But let's just look at one really important thing: timing. Timing is everything. It puts these lawsuits into, you know, question.
It is a little bit suspect that ballots have already been requested from our military and overseas voters, they continue to be because the deadlines haven’t fallen in all states. Ballots have started going out for overseas and military voters, as of 45 days prior to the election. That is specified as part of the law. So that was September 21st. Look at us now. We are in October.
We welcome the questions. We’d love more attention on the overseas and military voting process, but let’s save that for after a winner is declared.
Alicia Menendez: Susan Suinat, thank you so much for taking the time to join us this morning.