Dubai: American election fever is stirring US expats living in the UAE to prepare to cast absentee ballots from abroad ahead of the November 8 polling day, says the American Business Council of Dubai and the Northern Emirates.
To meet a rise in expat enquiries asking how and where they can exercise their franchise from the UAE, for the first time the council has established a voters’ centre in its Dubai headquarters at Emarat Atrium building near Safa Park to help guide American citizens through the process of voting while living abroad.
The business council represents 700 American businesses and employees in the UAE who make up part of an estimated 55,000 US expats living in the country.
Once application forms are filled out at the voting centre, absentee ballots are sent to the centre for UE expats to pick up at a later date. The UAE expats can send them home to the US directly or drop off to the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi and US Consulate in Dubai.
The ballots would be mailed free of charge to each voting expat’s home state in advance of elections for counting before the end of the election day.
Bilal B. Sabouni, Chief Executive Officer of the business council, told Gulf News in an interview that this year’s highly-charged presidential election has heightened expatriate’s political will to vote — and the council is answering the call to help make overseas voting more convenient for US citizens here in the UAE.
Sabouni said that “expats using our voting center can fill out an FPCA (Federal Post Card Application) — Voter Registration and Absentee Ballot Request.
Absentee voting
The absentee forms will be sent to the applicant, or the applicant may opt to list the American Business Council as their current mailing address if they do not have one to use in the Emirates for any reason.”
“Once the ballot is received, the vote should be cast and the completed vote should be sealed and dropped off to the US Embassy, Consulate, or the American Business Council for transfer to the US and mailing from there,” he said.
Stronger, highly vocal views express by candidates in this election are prompting more US expats to want to get out and vote.
“This election cycle has really been a catalyst for US citizens to vote whereas in the past, US citizens have not bothered as much,” Sabouni told Gulf News, adding paperwork has been prepared, laptops set up for voters to do research and staff are at hand to answer questions.
“We’re stacking hundreds of US voter applications. We’ll be a one-stop shop for voters to cast their ballots,” Sabouni said.
The spike in calls from American expats is understandable, Sabouni said, given the fervour of what he referred to as “not a normal election campaign … this is a much different landscape than the primaries.”
Sabouni said the demographics are vastly different with the Republican support base being “disenfranchised and wanting change” while Democrats are a “more traditional model.”
Animated
American citizens living in the UAE, he said, have become animated by what political pundits around the world say may be the single most bizarre and damaging general election run-up in the US history.
And it would appear it will only get worse before it gets better as both Democratic and Republican nominees square off in a hyperbole-fuelled race to win the White House when US voters hit polling booths on presidential election day on the traditional first Tuesday of November this year.
As a growing groundswell of opposition from inside the Republican party in the United States threatens to swamp presidential nominee Donald Trump, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton continues to be dogged by classified emails she sent from her private server.
Clinton leads in the polls by a comfortable margin across the country.
The latest YouGov poll shows Clinton with 42 per cent of the vote, a full six points ahead of Trump.
Trump is polling highest in the south and west regions of the United States while Clinton polls highest in the US northeast and Midwest.
