On a chilly afternoon in central London, the battle for the US presidential election is being waged as enthusiastically as campaigners are across the Atlantic.
Surrounded by posters of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s Democratic tickets, volunteers from an office organized by Democrats Abroad make phone calls urging Americans living abroad, including upset Republicans, to register to vote. I’m making a phone call to encourage you.
The event was just one of many held on the Day of Action in locations across the UK, where an estimated 200,000 Americans live. By evening, activists from chapters based in locations ranging from Scotland to England’s university towns were scheduled to join a Zoom rally addressed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“Many of us have lived abroad for years, even decades, but we care deeply about what is at stake in our home countries, and we also know that we care deeply about what is at stake in our home countries, and that We want it to be a place that we can still recognize when we return, whether it’s a country where we’re safe or not.”When it comes to the rights of women, our sisters, our daughters, we still have a safe country. Even so,” said Christine Woolf, chair of Democrats Abroad UK and a London resident since 2007.
The potential role of overseas American voters, who do not appear in national polls, should not be underestimated. In 2020, their votes made the difference in handing the key battleground states of Arizona and Georgia to Joe Biden.
With the race so close and the stakes so high, the British Harris supporters spoke out.
The group’s strategically placed advertisements can be found at bus stops in areas of London with high concentrations of Americans. This is also the first time community-targeted digital advertising has been deployed on Google.
Efforts are also being made to encourage people to register to vote through face-to-face contact, such as at the Freshers’ Fair in Oxford. On another recent weekend afternoon, activists set up outdoor tables in Hyde Park and London’s Marylebone Farmers Market, hoping to catch Americans passing by.
British pop star Harry Styles was among the curious passersby who stopped at the market table, although it is not known whether the singer holds a US passport.
That said, the British Democratic Party suddenly found itself with a local celebrity in Matt Craver. He was a student at Tim Walz’s former high school and recently spoke at “Rewatch” in London. Vice Presidential Debate.
Mr. Claver, a London-based software engineer and Democratic Party activist, also took students to a George W. Bush campaign rally in 2004, but when some students were turned away by organizers, Mr. Walz himself It also played a role in the political ‘origin story’ of People who believed they were Democrats. This experience led Walz to seek public office.
One of those students was Mr. Claver, who maintained that Mr. Walz’s sound public character was exactly the same as the private character he and others had known for years.
“My earliest memory of Tim is being in the school library and seeing him pop out with his jacket and briefcase, because he was part of the National Guard leading the flood response. “Because I was active,” he says.
“I wasn’t necessarily into sports, so the whole campaign metaphor of a coach might have been a little foreign to me, but they really made it fit. He’s everyone’s coach, whether it’s what he was doing when he was a teacher, what he was doing in 2004 when the incident happened at the rally, or what he’s doing now that he’s stepped up.”
As registration deadlines approach in states such as Wisconsin (October 16) and Pennsylvania (October 21), the UK Overseas Democratic Party’s efforts to mobilize American voters in the UK and elsewhere are taking on new urgency.
Countering misinformation in the form of Donald Trump’s misleading claims that Democrats are somehow preparing “fraud” and that ballots are being sent overseas without proper inspection The same goes for efforts to do so.
“That’s completely untrue, because the truth is that we have the most rigorous kind of processes in place,” Wolf said, adding that Trump was concerned about the potential influence of overseas voters and did not intentionally accused of trying to confuse and mislead.
