I think one significant part of the low turnout among US overseas citizens is quite simply the typical voter suppression associated with postal voting in general, including people simply not being told their own rights, exacerbated by some added bureaucracy from being situated outside of the USA and the ballot needing to pass through different postal systems. There might also be some demographics overrepresented among overseas citizens that have their own obstacles to voting, too. This is all a neat explanation of why my own family has generally not voted, however I don’t think this is the full story.

Another US overseas citizen on Hexbear remarked when I brought up the low turnout yesterday,

I’m an overseas American and I am not voting because it would be a bizarre waste of time. Not only would I be voting by mail in a solidly blue state but if votes by mail ever determined an election there would be a coup.

Indeed it seems to be in the “battleground states” where postal voting rights are most challenged. So it would seem that the states where it is easier to vote from abroad, are also the states where there’s nothing “competitive” about the elections to begin with.

What stood out to me more in that reply, however, was the remark that “there would be a coup” if postal ballots ever determined an election — essentially that the fact that postal ballots are already treated as inherently suspect, would in itself demotivate people from voting in the first place.

Otherwise there are probably many US overseas citizens who think of the elections as fundamentally illegitimate for other reasons, or who see both wings of the Capitalist Party as roughly the same — for better and for worse — and so they just wouldn’t bother voting even for a “third” party.

Or there could be other reasons! Like maybe there might be a stigma against voting in US elections from some countries, because this might make the voter look “disloyal” to their new country, I don’t know. This is just speculation.

So I’m hoping someone might have more insight into this topic, or might be able to even say the relative prevalence of different reasons why US overseas citizens don’t vote.