quote:

The overseas vote two years ago was tiny. Of those 6m Americans overseas, not even 1m were registered to vote.

Technical problems, bureaucratic hoops (voters must register with the state where they last resided) and the difficulties of actually getting a vote to count all played a part in keeping turnout low. Two-thirds of the ballots fell foul of these problems. Another 10% missed the deadline altogether. All told, only 330,000 ballots (5.5% of American expats) actually wound up counting in a total of 82m ballots cast that year. That is roughly the same as the total population of just one mid-sized American city, such as Tampa, Florida.