The Shocking Truth About How US Expats Vote

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:    00:00:22    Hi everyone. Kristin from Traveling with Kristin here and welcome to episode 78 of Badass Digital Nomads. And settle in my friends because this episode is a doozy. This is going to be different from any other episode that I have done to date because it's about politics, but it is a bipartisan episode. I can assure you. I do, however, feel like this is the most important topic that I have ever talked about, and I'll give you some backstory as to how this episode came about. But all I can say is prepare to have your mind blown <laugh>, this topic. I've been thinking about this topic for months about how us expats vote in the elections and if there are any patterns or correlations or what's kind of going on there. And I'll give you that backstory in just a second. But I just wanna preface this by saying that since I had the idea to do this podcast, it's been very difficult to research because it seems like the farther down the rabbit hole I got on this topic, the more mind boggling and disturbing It was.  

Kristin:    00:01:52    There were times during this research that I had to actually just get up and take a break <laugh> and just process it because it was just too much to handle. And I didn't know why I hadn't learned any of this information before. I didn't know why all of it was so foreign to me. I didn't know why it was so hard to uncover the information that I was looking for. And I don't know why no one else is talking about this. So if you have heard of any other content creators, whether they're in travel or politics or digital nomadism or whatever category or whatever corner of the internet, if you've heard people talking about this topic, please send me an email to hello@TravelingwithKristin.com or comment on on my content somewhere to let me know because I really feel like we need to start a bigger conversation about this.  

Kristin:    00:02:46    And I hope that this podcast is just the jumping off point for a much greater discussion, not only in the US but in the entire world. Uh, it is very important for everybody to listen to this information, whether or not you are an American or regardless of which country you're from, because I feel like this case study of US expats and voting is just a microcosm of a global problem that people don't even know is a problem yet. Um, because what I found out basically is that us expats don't vote almost at all, but there are millions of us and we could swing elections. And if us expats don't vote, then maybe expats from other countries aren't voting. And because of remote work, more people will either be leaving the cities and going into suburbs, rural areas, different states, different countries. And I think that the electorate of each country around the world is going to change so much because of the advent of the digital nomad lifestyle.  

Kristin:    00:04:00    So we really need to understand what's going on here and prepare for the very near future of post pandemic travel when people become global citizens and they leave their countries. And what are the implications of that? So in this podcast, my goal was to, as I said, figure out if there was any pattern or correlation in how US expats or full-time travelers or digital nomads vote. Um, I started with the US but of course this can be extrapolated to other countries and we can see if there are any similarities. But in this specific podcast, I'll give you my hypothesis that more expats are progressive or liberal. What made me think that, I'll share some insane crazy statistics about expats and voting. Explain how expats vote in presidential primaries, where they lean, explain why people don't vote and why expats don't vote specifically. And some other just really interesting statistics about expats in general, um, that were very disturbing.  

Kristin:    00:05:20    Like the fact that nobody knows how many US expats there are, there are estimates from less than a million to up to 9 million because expats aren't even counted or included in the census. And there's no definition, there's no generally accepted way to define who an expat even is. So there's just a lot going on here, but I'll also share what I think the implications are on the current and past elections as well as future elections. And of course solutions and how to take action. Things that you can do or how you can even vote as an expat because the number one reason that expats don't vote is because they don't know that they can. So we're gonna cover a lot. I'm gonna try to make it really concise and very direct. I'm thinking of this as a public service announcement <laugh>. And then we can go into more detail from there about certain issues in future episodes.  

Kristin:    00:06:27    But this is just to give you the lay of the land. Just lay out all of the information and just let it let you sit with it and just let it resonate because, or marinate <laugh>. I think that's the word I want because it's just gonna take some time to process. But before we get started, a quick note on last week's episode, which was about Digital Nomad Visas. Uh, there was one thing that I forgot to include in there about Estonia, and that is that if you get the digital nomad visa in Estonia, you will be considered a tax resident after 183 days of living there. And that's something that I forgot to mention. Um, so that's one of the downsides of that Estonia Digital Nomad Visa. So just a little sub note there. Also on YouTube this week on Traveling with Kristin, we have videos about the Croatia digital nomad visa and also how to travel to Croatia for tourism.  

Kristin:    00:07:25    So make sure to check those out and thank you to all of you listening and out there leaving reviews. And also thank you to my newest Patreon patrons, Heather and Colin, and you can become a patron of the podcast for just $5 per month at patreon.com/TravelingwithKristin. So, okay, everyone, let's get into it. So my premise with this podcast was to figure out if there are any tendencies or patterns in how US expats vote. And what made me wonder, this was because of my own story and my own evolution as you could say, my political evolution. And so I'll just give you a little bit of backstory as to how I thought of this. Um, maybe you remember a certain point in time in childhood where you started becoming cognizant of adults talking about politics and religion and more importantly talking about those topics as the things that you aren't supposed to talk about at dinner parties or with friends and family because they're just such controversial topics.  

Kristin:    00:08:46    And I remember being a kid wondering why <laugh> like, yeah, I went to, I went to Sunday school, I went to church. I knew some basics of, you know, how our US government was run. I knew who the president was, I was probably in elementary school. And I'm like, so I go to church, I know who the president is. Why don't adults talk about religion or politics? And so it wasn't until I got older of course, that I realized what the <laugh>, you know, effects can be of those discussions. These are very emotionally charged issues, very controversial topics. And so, you know, throughout human history it has always been that way. So at a certain age, well I guess at 18 I registered to vote for the first time, but I still wouldn't say that I was politically educated more than what my general traditional education gave me.  

Kristin:    00:09:44    And I definitely wasn't politically active. So maybe some of you, or most of you can relate to this, but I registered as a Republican because my parents were conservatives and so I didn't really have an opinion. So I just started where they did. So I think a lot of people can probably relate to that before you form your own political and religious beliefs to adopt the beliefs of your parents because that's what you're familiar with. What changed was I moved abroad and when I went abroad at 20 years old, my political and religious views changed because I became exposed to all of these different ways of thinking, different ways of living, people from different countries. And I just started to change my worldview. And so I changed my political status from Republican to independent, which meant that I could no longer vote in the primary elections because I wasn't a Republican or a Democrat.  

Kristin:    00:10:52    And so this led to me moving from voting Republican to actually not even voting at all. I think it was in 2012 that I didn't vote. So I moved abroad, I voted in 2000 when I turned 18, I moved abroad in 2002. And then I was kind of back and forth 'cause I studied abroad. And then I was full-time living abroad in 2005. I think I voted in the 2008 elections, but I did not vote in 2012 because the longer I was abroad, the more apathetic I became about the US political system. And if you are a US citizen living abroad, or regardless of which country you're from, maybe you can relate to this feeling where you kind of stop identifying with those domestic political issues because you're not as affected by them. And you're also a little bit jaded by how the whole system works.  

Kristin:    00:11:50    And yeah, you're just not motivated to vote, which we're gonna get to more on that in a second. So the longer I was abroad though, the more like liberal and progressive my political views became. And I'll also give you some reasons for that in a minute. But long story short, I came back to the US in 2016 to create a home base for a year. And that happened to be the year of the 2016 elections. And it also became the first time that I became politically involved in any way when Bernie Sanders ran for president. It was the first time that I actually cared or identified with a candidate <laugh> that was running for the presidential nomination. And so I ended up finding myself going to political rallies, knocking on doors, volunteering to phone bank. And I was like, what happened? Like I went from Republican to independent to apathetic to politically active.  

Kristin:    00:12:51    Like that's so strange. That's such an interesting evolution of how that happened. Of course, Bernie lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton, but when that happened, I remember reading a headline about the US expat primary results of the Democratic primary and how Bernie Sanders swept the expat vote of Democrats abroad. And I was like, that's so interesting. It was, um, the exact amount was 69% voted for Bernie in 2016 and 31% voted for Hillary. So I planted that seed in the back of my head. I'm like, that's very interesting. Fast forward to 2020 and I'm here creating content. It's an election year again. And all of these ideas and thoughts started coming back to me. Lo and behold, Bernie won the Democratic primary again among expats with 58% voting for Bernie Sanders, 23% voting for Joe Biden, 14% for Elizabeth Warren, and only 2% for Bloomberg, 1.5% for Buttigieg and less than 0.5% for Amy Klobuchar.  

Kristin:    00:14:14    That is a very stark difference to the amount of media coverage that those candidates got in the US and who won, right Joe Biden. So I, I was like, I need to explore this a little bit more. And my hypothesis was that more expats are progressive Democrats or libertarians. So this is my hypothesis and then I will tell you how that turned out. So the main reason that I think expats are more liberal, the first question is, is it correlation, causation or coincidence that we like to travel and that we live abroad? So is it because of our mindset that we go abroad or is it once we go abroad and are exposed to all of these different ways of living that we start to adopt uh, foreign perspectives in our worldview? So I think the types of people who become expats or digital nomads first of all probably tend to be more open-minded than people who aren't interested in travel and who don't have a passport, assuming of course that they have the economic opportunity to even be able to apply for a passport or travel abroad.  

Kristin:    00:15:41    And so we have at least an open mind to expanding our worldview then that leads us to leave the country in the first place to go live somewhere else. You know, I think somebody who's more patriotic maybe who would, who has a very America first mentality would probably not want to leave the country because they love it so much. So I'm not saying I don't love my country, but I was just more interested in what else is out there. I also think that in general, people who live outside of their home countries tend to be more accepting of other people, more interested in learning about other cultures, um, more interested in making friends with people from different countries. And this also leads us to I think, being less racist because like it's hard to be racist when you are a minority in another country and kind of on the sidelines in that country and probably have experienced some form of discrimination living in that country.  

Kristin:    00:16:48    So, and also you end up having friends of all different colors and all different ages and all different backgrounds and that can happen in any country, but it's just more likely to happen when you move by yourself to another country and you get kind of thrown into a new culture and a new society. But in no way am I saying that more people of one political party over another are more or less prejudice for example, or more or less accepting or have friends of one background versus another. I don't think that, I didn't research that to be honest, but I don't think that there's any correlation there. I was just thinking back to a story that my friend Agnes told on an upcoming episode of the podcast. She is from Kenya and she moved to a rural area of Minnesota and lived and worked there for many years.  

Kristin:    00:17:43    And she was telling me about her experience of, you know, meeting people that had never met somebody from a different country, let alone a different continent, um, let alone Africa or she's from Kenya, let alone someone from Kenya who maybe looks different from them. So it's just depending on where you're born, whether it's in the US or another country, if you're never exposed to people that look different from you or think differently from you, then that is limiting in some way and potentially can result in political beliefs that are, in my opinion, less inclusive, let's say, or that are focused more on different issues that are more individual rather than perceived with the good of the collective in mind or people that are less fortunate. And so basically for expats are for us expats especially our mentality turns from an ethnocentric individualistic point of view, which the US is an ethnocentric country to a more collectivist point of view, which lends itself to a more socialist or social democratic point of view.  

Kristin:    00:19:04    Another thing that happens when US expats or when US citizens become expats is that we get more exposure, especially in the past before the internet, more exposure to international media, international news. Of course that's accessible now online, but it's not as much in your face as it when you actually leave the US. And so this results in the American media, mainstream media propaganda machine getting unraveled because all of a sudden those talking points and those storylines lose some of their power and influence. Another thing that happens is that we then get to visit historical sites in foreign countries and kind of get the real unbiased stories behind what happened versus the US textbook history book perspective. So US expats actually end up living in either more authoritarian countries or more socialist countries. And so they start to see more of the risks of extremists and authoritarian governments, the poverty that comes with that, the lack of infrastructure, uh, the societal problems, the corruption, all of that.  

Kristin:    00:20:19    And then we also get a taste of what life is like in more socialist countries that are painted to be the bad guys and the American media narrative. And this is a better quality of life, a better healthcare system, higher on the peace index, better safety indicators, and just a lot of bonuses, better food, you know, less genetically modified food, more in some ways more personal freedoms and uh, more equality in a lot of ways. And so we start to kind of change our original perspective of this, America is the best America first everything. And this is not just my opinion, there are a lot of rankings out there by different organizations. For example, the Global Peace Index where the top 20 countries on the GPI are mostly European countries, for example, like you'll hear people talk about, uh, Denmark and Scandinavian countries when they refer to democratic socialism.  

Kristin:    00:21:27    And Iceland is number one on the GPI. Uh, Austria is number four, Denmark is number five, Canada is number six. The United States by contrast is ranked at 121 out of 163 countries on the Global Peace Index. So regardless of your opinion of America or how great of a country America is, which it certainly has many inspiring and redeeming qualities, clearly there's room for improvement when the US is ranked 121 on the GPI and quote unquote democratic socialist countries are filling up the top 20-25 when it comes to safety, security, quality of life, things like that. We also get the opportunity to live in a country where the leader of that country looks different and governs differently than the historical stereotypical US president. But when you're a US expat, all of a sudden the prime minister or the president or the leader of that country or various political leaders might be women, they might be people who are a different color, probably if it's like a not predominantly white country.  

Kristin:    00:22:47    And so we just start to get more exposure to different types of leadership and different perspectives. You know, it's for better or worse, it's not to say that women are better leaders than men, but you can compare and contrast, for example, the popularity level of the prime minister of New Zealand with the former president of Argentina. Jacinda Arder in New Zealand is definitely more popular and has a better reputation than Christina Fernandez de Kirchner. It's just different than comparing one president bush to the next President Bush or comparing Bush with Clinton, Clinton with Obama, Obama with Trump, Trump, with Biden. It's just a wider range and variation in leadership styles and people. Another factor in in US expats leaning to the left is as I mentioned, realizing that healthcare is better abroad. Well, better is my subjective opinion, but at least modern healthcare is a universal right? And it is available to everyone and less expensive or free seeing the way that social policies and services protect people, protect them from poverty, things like that.  

Kristin:    00:24:10    Um, and also realizing that the fear-mongering narrative and divisiveness of the US media narrative doesn't really fit in reality. So you might see a country and hear like Mexico, it's dangerous there, build the wall, you know all of this stuff about Mexico and then you go live in Mexico and you realize it's actually a great place to live and there's nothing to be afraid of and it's not more dangerous than the us. And then there's these other things that happen on as far as like a soft side. So you've got like these logical issues that you're looking at, and then you have these other, um, softer skills that get affected. So travel has been shown to increase empathy, to increase humility, to increase happiness, to enhance your feeling of connectedness with others and, and having a more global worldview where everyone is the same and finding common ground.  

Kristin:    00:25:16    It's also a transition from a material wealth mindset to more of an experienced based sharing mindset. So it's not to say that everyone is the same of course, but just that you can find more commonalities with people rather than differences a lot of the time when you travel. And of course travel is also known as the best form of education, right? It's a real world education that you get in different countries where you can build on that education through reading books from authors in different countries, visiting museums in different countries, meeting people in different countries, hearing their stories. And you just get exposed to a lot of different concepts, ideas, ideologies and realities that are hard to perceive when you have never left your home country. So for example, when I lived in Nicaragua, I did a really deep dive on the sand Anisa war, the whole Iran Contra affair.  

Kristin:    00:26:22    And I got a completely different perspective of what happened there from living in Nicaragua and traveling to battlegrounds of this civil war and reading books about what happened and meeting people who fought in the war and listening to their opinions of the US government and what happened there. I mean, I never would've had that perception going out to dinner with sand Anisa political leaders. I mean, there's no way that I ever would've been exposed to that had I not gone to live in Nicaragua. It's the same when you live in Europe and learn about World War I in World War II from that perspective and not the US History Museum or textbook perspective, as well as traveling through Southeast Asia. If any of you have ever been to Vietnam, for example. I haven't, but I've watched those, uh, Ken Burns documentaries on Vietnam. But I can imagine that living in Vietnam, you would have a completely different perspective on the Vietnam War compared to if the only exposure you got of it was in your textbooks in American public schools.  

Kristin:    00:27:34    It was the same way when I went to Hiroshima in Japan and went to ground zero of the atomic bomb drop. I mean, then there's the whole colonization thing. If you're living in former British colonies, you really start to understand what the impact of that was. And so basically you just get a a different side of the story when you live in other countries and then you also become more interested in foreign policy and then your vote becomes more based on foreign policy rather than domestic issues. So what I've noticed living abroad is how many Americans are embarrassed by Trump and how many Americans adopt a view of Trump that is more consistent with the rest of the world's mentality versus Trump's conservative base mentality. And I will talk to you a bit about how Republicans abroad voted and you will be very surprised by that.  

Kristin:    00:28:30    And then finally, I think we, I think expats probably become more non-denominational when it comes to religion or more open-minded or less religious in general. I mean, anecdotally, I know I did, I was raised Catholic and in Baptist bible study groups and, and I am now like basically agnostic. I don't know, I'm undefined. So that's a factor as well. Education level is a factor. For better or worse, people of different education levels vote differently according to demographic info. And you know, we don't have enough info on expats, but maybe education level has something to do with it. Access to funding or jobs that allowed them to move out of the country or opportunities that could affect like which way they lean politically. And also of course demogra, uh, demographics from age to gender to, you know, if you're retired or what your job is. And I also thought it could probably have to do with where expats are from, whether they're from urban areas versus rural areas, what kinds of economic opportunities they had, um, the quality of their education.  

Kristin:    00:29:45    And yeah, so these were all of my, these were all of the factors that contributed to my hypothesis of us expats leaning demo democratic. So this is not to say that one political party is better than another one or that the people are nicer or more empathetic or anything like that, or smarter not at all. It's just to say that when I read the platforms of Republicans versus Democrats versus democratic socialists and libertarians, so if I read from Wikipedia, for example, on Republican values, it says that the 21st century Republican party ideology is American conservatism, which incorporates both economic policies and social values. The GOP supports lower taxes, free market capitalism, restrictions on immigration, increased military spending, gun rights, restrictions on abortion, deregulation, and restrictions on labor unions, which is very contrasting to the environment in a European democratic socialist country for example, that believes according to the democratic socialist websites that both economy and society should be run democratically to meet public needs rather than to make profits for a few.  

Kristin:    00:31:14    And that they believe that resources should be used to meet human needs rather than exclusively to make profits for a few wealthy stockholders. And then looking at the US Democratic Party platform, it is contrasting with the conservatism of the Republican party in that it seeks to promote more social programs, consumer protections, workplace safety, more environmental regulations, access to universal healthcare, a woman's right to choose regulations on gun ownership, less militarization, things like that. There's also a different approach to immigration and the Democratic party that I personally identify with more and also a greater focus on civil rights. That's something that resonates more with me personally. But then you might have a different experience or a different opinion. For example, my mom had the opposite experience where she was raised in a very liberal household of people who grew up during the first and second world wars or fought in the first and second world wars and grew up in the Great Depression.  

Kristin:    00:32:28    And so she evolved from being a registered Democrat to changing her political affiliation to Republican because that was more aligned with her individual views. So it can go both ways. This is just my personal experience and what I have gleaned in so many years and nearly two decades now of traveling in different countries and the people that I've interacted with and and their political views. And then of course there are many expats that are more libertarian and on another side of the political spectrum that have a very, you know, hands off approach to governance and, you know, want zero taxes and less social programs and everything in between. So again, there is no right or wrong. The one caveat that I was thinking though is that expats are unique and that we, we tend to be socially liberal economically. Maybe it's a mix because it is proven that expats don't like paying tax abroad, uh, uh, taxes abroad.  

Kristin:    00:33:39    So us expats don't like paying taxes in their home country when they're not living there, but yet they still overwhelmingly voted for Bernie Sanders. So I think this is because we understand the value of taking care of people in general. I don't think that we're all necessarily anti-tax or zero tax, although there are a lot of libertarian expats as well. I think that maybe expats are a mix between liberal and libertarian. Um, there's a lot of different definitions in between there. Um, but that could be a reality. But um, I think it's just basically that it's not that expats don't wanna pay taxes at all, it's just that we want our taxes to go to either helping the greater good of which the US system isn't very good at. It's mostly going to the military <laugh>. Um, that's another thing that we don't like because we see the impact of the US military abroad.  

Kristin:    00:34:39    Um, but then, you know, we also understand having like a public option for healthcare and what the benefits of that would be. But then we don't get to use or we don't need to use the social services of the US if we don't live there. So many of us don't want to pay taxes. And also it's complicated to file taxes in a country that you don't live in. And the US is the only developed country in the world to tax people based on their citizenship and not their residency status. And so I think expats are angry that US expats are angry that they're the only ones that in the world that have to pay taxes in a country that they don't live in. So these are some of the background issues there. And as I mentioned my story of how I went from Republican to um, supporting Bernie Sanders, but I am not the only one.  

Kristin:    00:35:33    There are a lot of anecdotal examples of people who feel the same way. I just saw a video by Rick Steves yesterday, the famous Rick Steves who made a short video telling people why he was voting for Joe Biden. And he explained, I'll link to that in the show notes and then he explains the description why he made that video. There are also more Democrats abroad in general. Democrats abroad as an organization is much larger than Republicans abroad and also Democrats abroad is actually recognized by the DNC, whereas Republicans overseas are not recognized by the RNC and have no voting rights. So it just seems like there's more, um, more Democrats abroad. And then there was also in this whole Republican voters against Trump movement, you might have seen their YouTube channel has, I think it has over a million subscribers now at least hundreds of thousands.  

Kristin:    00:36:34    I saw a video of a re a Republican living in South Korea who posted a video to their channel about why he didn't vote for Trump. So there's all these nuances, um, that are happening. But the crazy thing that I found out, let's get to some of the statistics. What I found out when I started researching what's going on here and how this came to be is that no one knows, I mentioned this in the intro, no one knows how many US expats are actually abroad because US expats are not included in the census. There's no generally accepted definition of what makes a person an expat. And the US government just doesn't track it. Not only does the US government not track it, but even the Democrats abroad and Republicans abroad don't know. They only know how many people turned out to vote, uh, for their party and they don't even know who they voted for, right?  

Kristin:    00:37:34    Because votes are secret. Uh, the IRS doesn't know how many expats are abroad. They only know how many people filed tax paperwork with foreign bank accounts or, or disclose that they paid taxes in a foreign country. But that doesn't necessarily mean that those people are living in a foreign country. You could do that and still live in the US And then I was surprised to find that with all of the different public and private organizations, research organizations, different stakeholders, that very few, if any of them are focused on acquiring information about US expats, at least demographic information. So we have all of these different organizations pouring over data around election time, especially in just analyzing the demographics of the US and behavior of people. And they're excluding millions of US citizens who live abroad just because they're not physically within the borders of the countries.  

Kristin:    00:38:43    I find that to be very strange. That's basically disregarding a statistically significant portion of the population that continue to be US citizens unless they renounce their citizenship, which we'll also talk about in this podcast. So basically no one knows what an expat is, there's no official definition for it, and no one knows how many there are. Is an expat someone who goes abroad for one year or 10 years or has another citizenship or has, you know, like what is the definition of it? The estimates range so widely that it's mind-boggling. For example, only 335,000 people filed, um, foreign fbar bank account forms on their taxes and less than 1 million US citizens paid tax in a foreign country. So here we have like probably less than a million people that are at least filing or paying taxes abroad, maybe some of them or half of them or who knows how many of them actually live abroad or if they just have a bank account abroad or pay taxes abroad.  

Kristin:    00:39:55    But then the US State Department estimates for how many expats are living abroad that are non-military range from 4 million in 1999 to 9 million in 2016. But those are supposed to be completely overestimated numbers because the US government doesn't have this data, they have to actually take it from other countries. So they have to take basically information and stats from foreign countries on how many US citizens live there and then add it together and be like, this is how many US citizens we think are in other countries. But then of course there's plenty of digital nomads who don't file with their embassy or or file with a foreign government to say that they're even there. And we know from one study in the US um, called the MBO partner study that in I think it was 2018, 48 million Americans described themselves as digital nomads. So are those digital nomads living in the US or are they living in other countries?  

Kristin:    00:41:09    We don't know. And so that alone could be in that four to 9 million range. But then does that mean that millions of them aren't filing taxes or who knows? Because the IRS numbers contradict that, then it gets even crazier because the association of US citizens overseas says that there are 8.7 million expats and that 6.5 million of them are eligible to vote. So this association thinks that there's like more people eligible to vote than there may even be expats living abroad. Meanwhile, the um, Federal Voting Assistance Program or F-A-P  F-V-A-P says that there are 4.8 million expats and 2.9 million are eligible to vote. But expats have the lowest voter turnout of any demographic in the United States, lower than high school dropouts, lower than teenagers, a voter turnout between four and 12% depending on the election and the source. So FVAP says that only 135,507 ballots were received in 2018, which is equivalent of a 4.7% overall voter turnout.  

Kristin:    00:42:41    So we can't even tell how many expats there are from how they vote because such a small percent of them actually vote. So are 7 million expats eligible to vote? Are 3 million expats eligible to vote or are there only 1 million expats total living abroad and 135,000 of them are voting like there's just no numbers on this. And this is what drives me crazy, but I can't believe that no one knows and no one cares. That association of US citizens overseas also said that there are 600,000 expats in Canada and only 5% voted. So these are just really crazy numbers. But the one thing that that everyone agrees on is that US expats barely vote. And there are a lot of reasons for that. The number one reason that US expats don't vote is because they don't know they can vote. So that's the first thing. That's why I consider this podcast to be a public service announcement because somehow I knew I could vote or I figured out that I could vote by absentee ballot.  

Kristin:    00:44:04    But there are actually a lot of ways that you can vote. And so at the end, I'm gonna give you a list of ways that you can vote as an expat and some of a lot of resources. And you can also check the show notes for those. But why don't expats vote? What I found out is that it's basically the same reasons why other people don't vote. So even though expats might have a 5% to 8% turnout compared to stateside citizens, stateside citizens are actually 13 times more likely to vote than expats. But the US citizens in the US who don't vote, don't vote for the same reason that expats don't vote. And the first reason is lack of access. And the other reason is lack of enthusiasm. So those two things combined, complicated to vote don't care about voting or no enthusiasm for the candidates are the main reasons that people don't vote in general.  

Kristin:    00:45:08    So that goes for whether you live in the US or whether you live abroad. Expats also don't feel that their interests are represented and that is also similar to people in the US who don't vote. They're like, my vote doesn't matter. These politicians don't represent me or what I am or, or who I am or what I want or what I care about. And so they don't vote. The other thing that I uncovered is that money has a lot to do with it because a lot of the people who don't vote in the US are low income transient or don't own a home. What are many digital nomads are maybe not low income, but definitely transient and definitely don't own a home. And also US expats are small campaign contributors. So US citizens in the US who don't have a lot of money, also don't contribute a lot to political campaigns, don't have a lot of interest, don't have a lot of representation in government.  

Kristin:    00:46:14    Also, many of those people, especially immigrants, don't get counted in the census. And there's a lot of similarities there with expats. Actually in 2016, expats only contributed less than I think it's 0.08% of the $1.3 billion in political contributions. And so it's this vicious cycle where expats are like, well, these issues don't affect me because I don't live there. These politicians don't represent my interests, I don't like them. And then they think I am not going to contribute money to them because I'm already mad that I have to pay taxes there. And so because there's no campaign contributions in a system that's run by money, like therefore these politicians don't care about expat issues. They're physically not in the country and they don't give them money and so therefore they have less influence. And so therefore they're not voting. I mean these are just all things that are feeding.  

Kristin:    00:47:21    It's like a a circle or a cycle that's feeding into each other. So the main reason, just to recap that expats don't vote is because they don't know that they can, they're not interested in the political process. They have low enthusiasm. It's too complicated to vote. They have limited voting options. Their needs aren't represented in government and they feel like it doesn't make a difference and they just feel disconnected. Like the farther or the longer they're away from the country, the less connected they are to the domestic issues. Some other interesting things I found were that Democrats in the US are more likely to vote by mail. Um, so this is an opportunity for Democrats abroad, although we'll have to see what the numbers were in 2020. But in 2016 there was a 70% increase in voter registration among expats. However, there was still very, very low voter turnout.  

Kristin:    00:48:28    Um, with the Republicans, unfortunately I have even less information because like mindbogglingly, the Republicans abroad or the Republicans overseas are not recognized by the RNC, the Republican National Convention. So the Democrats abroad, which were founded in 1964, I believe after the Voting Rights Act, I think they are recognized by the DNC. They have eight representatives. So they actually have voting powers. And that's why I have actual data on the numbers of Democrats that turned out to vote in the primaries. Republicans aren't recognized, don't have voting rights, and therefore we have no data on how Republicans abroad vote in the presidential primaries or the presidential elections. So I think that's crazy and I think that both parties deserve representation and we're gonna talk about more about that and the solutions because voting is a right and no matter who you're voting for, you should have the right to vote and voting should be reasonably accessible for you to accomplish.  

Kristin:    00:49:46    Another interesting thing I found was a survey by Greenback tax consultants. So they surveyed 4,000 US citizens living in 125 different countries to share their opinions on US taxes voting the coronavirus pandemic and more. And the results of this study correspond pretty accurately with my hypothesis and my thoughts before I went into this rabbit hole. And so I'll give you the results of this survey. Granted, 4,000 people who responded to an expat tax firm's survey is not a necessarily representative sample size. Nevertheless, the findings are still really interesting and insightful. 89% of the respondents felt like they weren't represented and US government, 70% of the respondents don't want to pay US taxes while living abroad. 25% are considering renouncing their US citizenship, which I'm gonna talk about in a second. And then interestingly, 82% said that they plan to vote in the 2020 election. So this must be 82% of the 5% of the expats you vote.  

Kristin:    00:51:11    Um, when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, eight in 10 expats disapprove of how the US government handled the coronavirus response compared to six in 10, according to a b, c news that I found of US citizens in the US who disapprove of how the government handled coronavirus. So more expats disapprove than state side citizens. And out of the expats, 91% said that they stayed abroad during coronavirus and 63% of them were going to remain abroad. So I thought that was interesting because most of the expats who responded to this survey were living abroad when they responded and they felt more comfortable living abroad during the pandemic than living in the US. And then almost half of them, 46% said that they thought their host country abroad had better healthcare or was managing the coronavirus crisis better than the US. Super interesting. And then almost 30% had concerns about safety and civil unrest in the US during the Coronavirus pandemic.  

Kristin:    00:52:26    So I thought that that was very insightful and especially when it comes to US citizenship and renouncing their citizenship and how that impacts how people vote or maybe why they don't vote because in recent years, more people have been renouncing their citizenship. So in 1998, less than 400 people renounced their US citizenship. In 2020, nearly 6,000 people renounced their US citizenship and it has fluctuated a bit in different years. But the big spike came in 2013 when 3000 people renounced their US citizenship. And this aligned with the Foreign Tax Compliance Act, FATCA, which it was additional reporting requirements for US citizens with bank accounts abroad. So it made it more complicated for US citizens living abroad to file their taxes. And it made it more difficult for US citizens abroad to open a bank account, for example. That is a topic for another, another episode as well.  

Kristin:    00:53:40    But this is a reason why people are renouncing their citizenship because they don't wanna file these forms. They don't wanna pay taxes in a country they don't live in. They don't use social services in their home countries and they can't open bank accounts or like have a normal life living abroad when they have to do all of this paperwork back in the US. And so this also relates to this general sentiment among expats that they don't have any representation in government. And so they're like, well, why be a US citizen if I'm paying taxes, I'm not represented, my needs aren't being met, I don't want or need their expensive healthcare and all these other reasons. And then there's also family reasons, work reasons, financial reasons. They're like, I'm not gonna go back and live in the us especially if they're retired and they're like, well, I'm gonna live out the golden years in this other country, so why keep paying taxes?  

Kristin:    00:54:41    So that's gonna be a big factor in the future, but you don't have to be retired to give up your citizenship. Uh, famously Andrew Henderson, Nomad Capitalist renounced his citizenship and also Eduardo Severin, the co-founder of Facebook Renounced. And then if anyone knows Dan Bilzerian, he's kind of Instagram famous. I have a lot of mutual friends with him as he's a poker player. His brother allegedly renounced his US citizenship and moved to the Caribbean and actually wrote a book about it that you can find on Amazon called America, Love It or Leave It. So I left. So there's that. And then we talked about how expats voted in the primaries. We talked about why people don't vote. We talked about why expats don't vote specifically, what are the implications of this on current and past elections? What does this all mean when it comes to voting and election cycles?  

Kristin:    00:55:47    Well, as we know, many elections are won and lost by very thin margins. Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1% in 2016, and she got about 2.9 million more votes than Trump. When you think back to how many expats are abroad, whether it's 1 million or 4 million or 9 million, that is a population equivalent to the 10th largest state up to about the 25th largest state in the US. But let's say that 5 million or 6 million people are eligible to vote abroad, but they don't. That is twice as much, twice as many more people than Clinton's margin in the 2016 election. So easily an extra 3 million expats living abroad who are voting can swing an election. 138 million people voted in 2016. And a voter turnout of 150 million people is expected in 2020. But I was listening to a 538 podcast and they said that conservative estimates are around 140 million people.  

Kristin:    00:57:12    So that's only 2 million more people. And that could be like a record voter turnout. And expats could make up one to 6 million extra voters. 3 million extra voters is 2% of the electorate. Clinton won the popular vote by 2%. 6 million extra voters is 4% of the total electorate. So these are very significant numbers. Al Gore won the popular vote by only 540,000 more votes, and he actually lost the US election in part because of the votes of expats from what I read. So because of the lawsuits in Florida and the slim margins vote by mail and absentee ballots played a bigger role in that election than um, regular stateside votes. So these are all, I mean, expats can have a huge impact on how the election results turn out. Vox also said in an article I read that the main reason Trump won in 2016 was a lack of voter enthusiasm and a lower voter turnout compared to 2012.  

Kristin:    00:58:31    That aligns with my findings on why expats don't vote. Lack of enthusiasm, the lowest turnout of any voter demographic and you know, lack of access or confusion around how to vote. So it doesn't matter if you vote Republican or Democrat. If you're an expat living abroad and you're not voting, then you should because you can and your vote matters. And apparently most expats don't think that their votes matter because 95% of them don't vote. So we'll see what happens in 2020. So that is all pretty dire information in those statistics that I just gave you. But as you know, we're all about positivity, uh, realism, but also optimism and inspiration here on my show and in my content. So I came up with some solutions for how the country could fix the situation and what individuals could do to help in this situation. So when it comes to solutions, I have two categories, your needs and your wants.  

Kristin:    00:59:45    These are what I think the basic critical needs are to get just a better handle on this situation of expat voters out in parallel universe, gray area land, AKA outside of the US. First we need to define what an expat is. The US government and statisticians, researchers, people need to define what it is that an expat is. Okay? We need a clear definition on that. Then we need to count them. Okay? We need to gather demographic info on expats so we know who they are and where they are. You know, it's really funny that I almost didn't apply for global entry because that came out in I think 2013, 2014. It was around the time that there were all the privacy concerns and like the Edward Snowden stuff was going on. And I thought if I got global entry, that the US government was just gonna track everything I was doing and where I was going and whatever.  

Kristin:    01:00:51    And I even didn't register with my, um, consulates in different countries. 'cause I'm like, I don't want them to know, like it's none of their business where I am. And I think a lot of expats have that attitude, even though in the case of like a natural disaster or something, it would be better if people knew where you were. So eventually I did apply for global entry and I got it and it was no big deal. But it's really funny to think that like no one's counting us anyway, <laugh>. So we need to figure out who, what constitutes an expat? How long do you have to live abroad to be an expat? And what happens to all the remote workers who go back and forth in digital nomads? Like what, what is our definition? Who are we, you know, we need demographics on this as well.  

Kristin:    01:01:30    Like maybe a lot of expats don't want the US government to know who they are for privacy reasons, and I get that, but at least there needs to be a way to count expats in the US census. So these aren't things that you and I can do. We can raise awareness about it, but these are decisions that need to take place in government. But we can pressure for these things to happen. We also as a country, need to allow expats to change their tax domicile away from the us. There's no valid reason for the US to have a citizenship based taxation system and the only one in the world besides Eritrea. We just need to give expats more options so that they can participate more and that they can cut ties to the US in other ways if they want, without having to renounce their citizenship.  

Kristin:    01:02:24    Because a lot of really smart, cool, successful, empathetic people with global worldviews and open minds are out there renouncing their US citizenship because of all of these restrictions. So we probably need to discontinue, no, not probably, we need to discontinue FATCA and all of these other predatory provisions in the tax code. And we need to make it easier for expats to vote. First, we need to tell expats that they can vote. There needs to be like a public awareness campaign that expats can vote. And in Florida, expats can vote by fax. And most other states expats can vote by mail. But we just need to make it more straightforward and we need to educate people on how they can vote. In some states, you can have your ballot emailed to you and then you can print it out and mail it back. I did not know that.  

Kristin:    01:03:20    I'm sure most people didn't know that. So those are some critical things that need to happen as soon as possible to try to amend just in general this situation that we're in. Other things that I would like, this is my once list, is I think that expats need our own state and local representation or our own jurisdiction. Maybe we need to create an expat state. Maybe Puerto Rico needs to become a state, you know, maybe lots of other, um, US territories need to become states, but at least, um, Democrats and Republicans abroad at a minimum need to be recognized at least by their political parties, if not have a say in local state government in the national, um, government as well. We just need to have more representation. And I brought up Puerto Rico because there are a lot of US territories that don't have that kind of representation.  

Kristin:    01:04:19    And so the more remote workers that become expats, the, you know, more we're gonna have this capital and intellectual flight out of the country. And the less representation those people will have, the less people will have voting, the less people will have running for office. Like there's just all of these little butterfly effects that happen. Another thing that I would love for us to have is some kind of a lobby or at least a lobbying presence or maybe our own super pac. Like if expats want to have influence in the domestic elections, apparently we need to contribute money and we need to have someone out there acting on behalf of our interests. I don't know who those people will be because expats seem seemingly are disinterested in US politics. But, um, that's something that should happen if we want anything to change. And then we also need, or I would like us to have a easier way to qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion if we don't have a residency based taxation system as opposed to citizenship based.  

Kristin:    01:05:32    At least it should be easier for expats to get an income tax credit for living abroad. So we need to make that income exclusion higher. We need to make it easier to attain rather than the current ways of staying abroad for 330 days per year or having, um, uh, like a legal permanent residency in another country or businesses in other countries. So I think that those will be some solutions that can help us go in a different direction and help expats feel more included in their home country society treated more fairly and also more represented and more enthusiastic to make their voices heard. So how can you take action? The first thing you can do is register to vote. If you are an expat or not, you should register to vote and vote. But if you are a US expat abroad, you need to know that you can vote and that it's quite easy to vote.  

Kristin:    01:06:35    Quite straightforward. You can find information on how to vote as an expat with the FVAP, Federal Voting Assistance Program at fva.gov/citizen-voter. And I'll put this in the show notes. You can also go to votefromabroad.org and you can also go to the US State Department and find their absentee voting information that I will also link to in the show notes. Or you can contact your local embassy in whichever country you are currently living in or traveling through. So those are the main ways, but the easiest way is probably just go to votefromabroad.org or go to fva.gov You could also share this podcast or this information with everyone, you know, basically spread the word raise. Hell be like, did you guys know this? I didn't know this. If anyone did know all of this information, also please email me because I wanna talk to you because with, I've been living out of the country for basically on and off for 18 years, and I did not know 99% of this info.  

Kristin:    01:07:49    So if you did know, come on the podcast. Another thing to do is to decide which issues are most important to you, issues or issue. And then contact your elected officials about those issues. Make your voice heard and join your political party abroad, whether you're part of Republicans overseas or Democrats abroad or a groups, or try to find a political group that represents you in the country that you're in or online, in the, the internet country. And join it. Get involved. Talk to other people that care about the same issues that you do and realize that you're not alone. That there's between one and 9 million of US  <laugh>.  

Kristin:    01:08:40    That's the craziest part, that no one knows how many expats there are.  

Kristin:    01:08:46    So that's how you can take, uh, get, get involved and take action at a very bare minimum. Um, and then I have some open-ended questions for you to ponder. These are things that I have not found the answer to, but I think are important questions that everyone should be asking, not just expats in digital nomads, but the mainstream media, 538, the Daily Show, John Oliver. Like these are things that everyone needs to be talking about. What happens to the electoral map when liberal voters leave urban areas, New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, et cetera, for the suburbs or for rural areas, or to tax free states or to other countries or to swing states. Um, they're mostly going to places with better climates, lower taxes, and a lower cost of living, including states that are currently toss up states in the US elections like Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Texas, and then even states like Arizona and Nevada.  

Kristin:    01:09:58    So what's going to happen to election results in the future once all of the remote workers have resettled in other areas, in and out of the country? I don't know. How will the rise of small tech bubbles across America affect election results? Because we have Facebook and Google and big tech companies leaving those metropolitan areas and going to lower cost of living lower tax states, um, and going to places throughout middle America and in Texas. So how is that going to affect when the election results, when the distribution of voters is rearranged in that way? That will be really interesting to see. And then if a lot of people move abroad, what happens to voter turnout in the future? Let's say there's already 5 million digital nomads in the US and there's already estimates of five to 9 million expats abroad. Uh, what happens when that number quadruples or 10xs itself?  

Kristin:    01:11:09    What happens to voter turnout? That's a disaster. It doesn't matter which side you're voting for. We can't have millions and millions of people just not vote because they're living somewhere else and they don't know how to or they don't care. And then if expats, if like less people lived abroad, let's say like these, all of these millions of expats that live abroad now, what if they came back for some reason? Or would they then be 50% more likely to vote the way that, um, people are back in the us? Like is this really affecting voter behavior that much? Is, is the fact that you live inside or outside of the borders of the us is that basically a litmus test in saying you are 5% likely to vote versus you are 40% likely to vote? That's significant. And how will Van Lifers and RV lifers affect voter turnout in the future?  

Kristin:    01:12:11    What if there's millions more people living hashtag van life and they aren't in their jurisdiction to vote <laugh>? Are they going to vote at the same rate of expats? Or maybe they're turning out 10%, 15%, 20% compared to 50%? That's also significant. And then what does this mean just in general for representation? If people who were going to run for office someday, what if those people became digital nomads and left the country? What does that mean for just general diversity and representation in government? These are some of the questions that I'm thinking about, but my final thoughts are basically that the US has completely dropped the ball when it comes to appreciating the impact that expats have on the US electorate, on US society and US representation in other countries around the world. And we've been neglected. We've been neglected by our local state national government.  

Kristin:    01:13:26    We've been neglected by organizations and nonprofits and 5 38 and everyone who's pouring over these demographics and polling and all of this, um, data about elections, completely ignoring like five to 10 million people who live abroad. And then it also goes to show that my hypothesis was quite accurate as far as expats voting more blue than red, although we don't have exact statistics on that. I think that the fact that so many expats overwhelmingly voted for Bernie Sanders, oh, and Republican expats did not vote for Trump, Republican expats were more likely to vote for Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate, or for Hillary Clinton. So that's significant as well. So why are expat voters if they're not voting? You know, if they're voting more Democrat than Republican? Not only that, but Republican expats are voting against Trump. That is worth looking into as well. And so I think that expats can swing elections.  

Kristin:    01:14:46    We just didn't know that we could. We didn't know that we were so important, but we are. And so we have to increase our voter turnout among expats and among digital nomads because we're generally informed citizens. We've had the opportunity to travel or live in other countries. We've had exposure to other ways of living, other types of people from other cultures, other nationalities, other ideologies. People who travel are generally more empathetic people. And we need to contribute what we've learned in these other countries for the greater good of the country and also the world. Let's not just isolate ourselves in other countries and be like, I'm not gonna participate because I'm not physically there because we live in a remote society in a remote economy. And so if you're not participating in your country's elections, but you're working online and you're communicating with people online, and you're online dating and you're running your business online, then like you should also be voting remotely and participating in civic action remotely or physically in whatever country you happen to find yourself in.  

Kristin:    01:16:09    Also, too many people are being forced to give up their citizenship. There should be other options. Americans shouldn't have to renounce their passports in order to have freedom and freedom from paying too many taxes in general. What I found in my research reflected a very surreal, ethnocentric limited perspective on the expat electorate in a very advanced, remote, global, interconnected society. And this situation needs to change for the better. And it needs to change now, and it needs to change before the next election in 2022, and especially in 2024 because after the pandemic or after there's a vaccine, remote work is going to continue exploding. Global mobility and immigration is going to continue to exponentially increase. And these are issues that need to be taken care of yesterday. But the second best time is right now. So please share this info or this episode with as many people as you can.  

Kristin:    01:17:23    We need to start this conversation on a massive scale before it's too late. And there are tens of millions of us expats abroad and even bigger mass. And if you're from a different country, look into this in your own country, what are the implications of expats from your country living in different countries? How is that affecting the voter turnout in your home country? So maybe this is a pervasive issue that happens everywhere in the world. Maybe it's something that's just isolated to the US, although I doubt it. So take a proactive approach, look into it, share this with people. Maybe let's email last week tonight or something and tell them to do a feature on this topic because it's so timely and it's so important. So I hope that this information was as profound and enlightening to you and moving to you as it was to me. And if you have any questions or thoughts or ideas or concerns about this topic, send me an email to hello@TravelingwithKristin.com. Join us in the Facebook group, Badass Digital Nomads, and see you next week. Thank you so much for listening. And remember to leave a review for the podcast wherever you listen and share this episode with someone you think it might help.  

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