I study racist and racist speech. I am also an American citizen, and have voted from overseas since 1996 ( first in the UK, and now in Canada ).
This makes me particularly well-placed to discuss why Donald Trump’s Truth Social post about foreign citizens in late September and Republican attempts to defame those citizens are technically incorrect and politically dangerous.
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which Ronald Reagan, a Democratic president, signed into law, is the current law granting Americans living abroad the right to cast ballots in national elections.
Given that many of them are American citizens who reside abroad and are eligible for citizenship, the Department of Defense is in charge of the software. Anyone who believes that allowing foreign citizens to cast ballots is some sort of left-wing crime if pause after reading this.
Complex approach
Nor is it an easy matter to voting from abroad. After registering and submitting the plea form, each state has its own procedure for verifying membership, and each state has its own guidelines that voters must adhere to in order for their votes to get counted.
My own position, New Jersey, is fairly straightforward: I may internet my registration/request type, find my vote by e-mail, and email it up. However, I must keep in mind that my ballot must also be sent in its paper form otherwise my vote wo n’t count.
Whether I’m from Canada or originally from the UK, this is simple enough for me. However, it’s much more challenging for American citizens who reside in areas without trustworthy post offices and who frequently have to rely on cheap courier service to discharge their civic duties.
My father’s position is New York. He may email his ballot request via email, but he must even send a paper copy of it. Additionally, the vote itself comes with a sophisticated set of template envelopes that need to be precisely folded and must be delivered by a strict deadline, regardless of where it’s being sent from.
He’s a former graphic designer, and pleasant performing this task. However, consider trying to do so if you have gout or perception issues, particularly since the home-printed version has so little text. In short, there is nothing quick about voting from overseas.
But why use inflammatory language to make it seem as though it’s simple to get a lot of phony seats from abroad? To stoke fear about the vote results, perhaps? Anything that can stifle the counting process and cause doubt can be used in a campaign that could lead to Trump and his supporters declaring him the winner on November 5th.
Trump’s strategy has made no secret about its intention to go down this path.
Speech that suggests Americans are not really Americans living abroad also fits into a larger style of stoking groups and of drawing ever tighter restrictions around who would be regarded as “real” Americans. This is a classic fascist power move, one that leads to a sharply defined “us”, who are worthy of moral consideration, as opposed to” them”, who are not.
Disenfranchising citizens worldwide
Interestingly, there is more to the story than just a social media post about the opposition to foreign citizens. In a number of states, complaints are filed to deport American citizens from other states. These are people who may have gone to great lengths to carry out their duties by requesting and sending in vote ballots, frequently at great personal expenditure and faced with significant obstacles.
Trump and his friends are working diligently to stop Americans from utilizing their most fundamental membership right abroad. When Trump uses language that accuses outside citizens of fraud and international intervention, it suggests we’re not really Americans.
There’s a major problem in doing so. As previously mentioned, a significant portion of American citizens living worldwide are members of the US military. The government is also targeted at disenfranchisement in the same way that Americans are disenfranchised overseas.
‘ Figleaf’ speech
That’s why Trump’s incident on Truth Social that Democrats “want to reduce the Real vote of our wonderful defense” makes no sense. This is especially true given that it comes from a person who is criticizing the pretty law that allows members of the military to cast ballots for him if they so choose to.
This is referred to as a figleaf, an extra piece of speech that serves as a little background for saying something less satisfactory. The allegation suggests, to someone who does n’t understand overseas voting, that Trump somehow supports the military.
Trump’s “diluting the voting” language also plays into the profoundly racist Great Replacement Theory. This hypothesis assumes that Democrats and other dark organizations ( often portrayed as Jews ) are attempting to remove white Americans with immigrants in part to safe electoral defeat.
Voting abroad might seem like a gimmick. However, foreigners could make a decisive variation in a nearby election. The attack on foreign elections is a component of a much larger pattern of destructive comments made by Trump about who is and is n’t a real American.
Jennifer Saul serves as the University of Waterloo’s head in social and political philosophy of language.
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