https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/19/politics/election-2020-americans-voting-abroad/index.htmlWhen Keith Silverang went to request his absentee ballot from the local election office in the county where he was last a permanent resident in the US, he followed the same procedure he's followed when voting abroad in every general presidential election since the early 1990s.
He emailed his local election official in Bergen County, New Jersey, with the forms requesting an absentee ballot in May -- earlier than he normally would, but given the coronavirus pandemic, he wanted to be prepared.
He didn't hear back for months.
Silverang lives in Espoo, a town in Finland. He's lived abroad for 33 years. But this is the first time it's taken his local election office months to respond about his absentee ballot application. After he sent an inquiry through the Bergen County election website threatening to take legal action if they did not respond, an election official emailed back in early September confirming his application had been received and his ballot would be sent. He received his ballot via email on Saturday.
The Bergen County Clerk's Elections Division said in a statement to CNN on Saturday that it had emailed ballots to more than 2,000 military and overseas voters as of Friday, but with 600,000 voters in the county, it "would be impossible to phone call, email or send a mail receipt for every person."
Silverang is one of about 5 million Americans living abroad, about 3 million of whom are eligible to vote. There are an additional 172,000 active duty personnel serving overseas, said David Beirne, the director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, which provides information and resources about voting to Americans abroad. Out of all of the Americans living abroad, 67.5% voted by mail in the 2018 election, according to the Election Administration and Voting Survey 2018 Comprehensive Report.
Many Americans abroad, like Silverang, are concerned that slower mail in the US, due to policy changes implemented by the new Postmaster General over the summer, and abroad could cause their ballots to arrive late and not be counted in the general election. In order to ensure their vote is counted, Silverang and other American ex-pats CNN spoke with are taking a proactive approach, reaching out to their local election officials and checking to make sure their absentee ballot requests and ballots have been received.
