Avuncular American

Travels Through the Green Heart of Florida

Back roads in central Florida are a nice alternative to risking life and limb on the Interstate.  You can drive almost as fast, but the two opposing lanes impose a certain discipline, and there's no comparison in traffic congestion.  After a family reunion on the margins of Disney World, I headed back to the Gulf coast through the orange groves of "Frostfree" and other colorfully-named places.  Passing over Troublesome Creek, I wasn't far from Soggy Bottom.  Had the Coen brothers (of O Brother, Where Art Thou? fame) been inspired or was this an echo of the 2000 hit comedy?  In any case, a road works sign informed me that "State Prisoners at Work" were up ahead, but I detected no chain gangs.

My genial host in Sarasota marveled at my wanting to drive through what he called "cracker country," but it's all part of my "cultural learnings," as Borat would say.  At least this rather pretty swath of the state has a real economy - though apparently based on a citrus monoculture - compared to the Florida coastline, where the part of the population not earning its living from tourism sells life's necessities (and a lot of dross too) to the other part that is dependent on the "snowbirds," that quaint expression describing the Northerners (American and Canadian) who migrate south for the winter.  There were even rolling hills and lakes that didn't appear to be glorified swamps.

As with other parts of rural - especially Southern - states, there are lots of churches, some part of larger denominations like the First Baptists, others of various pentecostal evangelical fundamental persuasions.  The percentage of "manufactured homes" (mobile homes to you and me) is very high, and the contrast with the faux-Spanish stuccoed condominiums and villas of urban Florida couldn't be more striking.

Borrowed CDs and NPR (for non-US readers, National Public Radio, the news, music, and culture network) provided aural diversion from the monotony of the orange groves, and no Deliverance moments were had, though I did see a few ramshackle dwellings with anti-social warnings about dogs.  Urban or rural, Florida abounds in gun shops, and American flags.  To the foreign visitor: the largest American flags fluttering in the breeze are not indicative of a government installation, but show you the way to a car dealership.  You can still buy a little plastic gizmo to attach a flag to your rear passenger window, though there are far fewer of these than after the post-9/11 patriotic fervor.

My rambles have gone on long enough.  Next: political learnings on things like the health care situation.

From Dirty Dick's Christian Spa and Good Eats

My friend Dick, happily retired in Florida's Gulf coast, does provide the Good Eats (although you might have to cook some yourself), but the Christian part is definitely tongue in cheek.  He's one of the tidiest bachelors around, so the "Dirty Dick" part is there just for color, though it does sound properly rakish and piratical.   He was a Navy man before he became a diplomat and eventually my first boss in the Foreign Service.

Those days are past, and we spend much of our time applying our honed analytical skills - sorry, but Evaluation Report language always manages to creep in... trying to get our heads around the matter of the State of the United States.  It's a lifelong task.

We were blissfully enjoying a beer and Cheap Eeetz alongside the marina when a wide screen TV on the wall announced the mass killing at Fort Hood ("the largest active duty armored post in the United States Armed Services") Texas.  When we read the caption naming the alleged shooter, we knew it boded ill for a whole host of reasons.  Yet another "senseless killing" as they say, the work of a possibly deranged individual.  A Lone Star Shooter.  But because the suspect has a name that resonates from here to the Middle East, and because his victims were soldiers in a place where they shouldn't have been under fire, he won't be "just another" mass murderer.

Nidal Malik Hasan's apparent infiltration of personal weapons onto the base has to cause concern for the hundreds of other military installations scattered across the country, and across the world.  "We will increase our security presence here in the coming days" said base commander Lieutenant General Robert Cone.  Well, of course they will, but the deed is done, and no amount of posting Humvees with 50 caliber machine guns trained at the gates will screen murderous intent in the minds of soldiers who might "go Postal."

Do you know how many private cars pass through the gates of just this one base - population 50,000 or so - daily?  Sure, they can double and triple check ID, pull some suspicious sergeants and potentially mad majors over and have them open up the trunk, but a determined killer will easily stow a few handguns and plenty of ammunition wherever he pleases.  It's what's in the mind, not what's under the hood.

Read today's Bob Herbert, himself a Vietnam era vet and consistent in his recognition of the extreme stress that upwards of a decade of wars has put on the US military.  Herbert reminds us that stress is not just a minor irritant in the context of repeated exposure to war zones.  There is not one iota of an excuse for this insane act's perpetrator, but Herbert reminds us that "we haven’t heard a lot about the scores of suicides at that same base — the highest of any U.S. military installation — since the invasion of Iraq in 2003."

This mass murder, like the many before it, unleashes the perennial battle over gun control, or rather the lack thereof, in the United States.  The same arguments for and against will be trotted out with numbing effect.  It's unfortunate that there are ultra-stressed out individuals, whether soldiers or civilians, but why oh why do we make it so easy for them to act out their impulses?  "Guns Don't Kill People; People Kill People" read the NRA bumper stickers.  Perhaps, but a potential mass murderer armed with, say, a kitchen knife he just grabbed on impulse might be a tad less lethal than one armed with an automatic weapon and endless ammo clips.

But at Dirty Dick's Christian Spa and Fine Foods, we don't indulge in pie-in-the-sky.  Just add Fort Hood to the list - Columbine, University of Texas, Virginia Tech - shake your head, and hit the remote control.  There are, apparently, other priorities.  To be continued...

In Washington, With All Its Denizens

Denizen-in-Chief, Barack Obama, is on the cover of maps sold to tourists.  I can't tell you what it means to pass by Pennsylvania Avenue and know that a good man, a smart man is in residence there.  That said, as I was contemplating the change since I last set foot in this city (circa November 2006) and looking at the American flag fluttering in the floodlights, I almost tripped over a rather fat rat, scurrying across the sidewalk.  Oh well, not everything has changed. 

The panhandlers are still here, though they don't seem any more numerous in these straitened times.  They've always been a feature of Washington, ever since Reagan-era closings of places like mental institutions simply put people out on the street who had nowhere else to go.

No, the rat was not a squirrel - I saw plenty of them in today's daylight.  The autumn colors were lovely as the plane swooped down to Dulles.  It's nice to be back, and next time I'll report on what the locals tell me.

A Temporarily Repatriated View of America

In November I'll be blogging from the US, a novelty for this expat.  From Washington and then from Florida, testing Bob Herbert's view (10/27 NYT) of the zeitgeist:

Americans have tended to watch with a remarkable (I think frightening) degree of passivity as crises of all sorts have gripped the country and sent millions of lives into tailspins. Where people once might have deluged their elected representatives with complaints, joined unions, resisted mass firings, confronted their employers with serious demands, marched for social justice and created brand new civic organizations to fight for the things they believed in, the tendency now is to assume that there is little or nothing ordinary individuals can do about the conditions that plague them.

How come the "tea party" fringe, gathering thousands of people calling President Obama everything from a fascist to the Anti-Christ, but no "million sick-person march" storming the Senate over health care reform?  Why?

Thus we begin Year 3 of Avuncular American.  [note: the "Repatriated View" series of posts ran November 1 - 13].

The Luxury of Sunrise and Sunset

Note to readers:  This essay (non-political, for a change) appears in the current issue of "Together Magazine," a glossy Brussels bi-monthly distributed to the legions of EU functionaries and "advocacy" people (lobbyists) in this city.  UK spelling and references to £ and € reflect the generally Brit readership among the anglophone expat population.  The magazine's theme for the issue was "luxury."

Mont St. Michel, France

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Luxury – especially if its antonym is “discomfort” – cannot surely be all bad. Carried to extremes however, its pursuit can become, in the term coined by 19th century economist Thorstein Veblen, “conspicuous consumption” that is, wasteful, unnecessary, and – in these days of economic down-turning – downright despicable.

Perhaps that’s why certain advertising agencies have banned the “L” word from their lexicon, as Adweek recently suggested. This has happened before: luxuria, or “lust” in Latin, was the first of the original Seven Deadly Sins; search Google for contemporary usage and you’ll find certain British rock groups and dodgy Italian politicians.

What this will mean for all those products – Electrolux® appliances, Unilever’s Lux™ brand line – with the sinful suffix is difficult to say. As a prefix, “lux” is another matter, however – nobody accuses Luxembourg of lustful excess, though the Grand Duchy might have to go some extra lengths to prove that it is no longer a haven for all those luxury-seeking tax cheaters.

Flaunting your luxurious lifestyle to excess can sometimes result in trouble – if your conspicuous spending mismatches with your tax contributions, it can even bring the taxman to your door. The French have a term for that: “signes extérieurs de richesse” – there’s a delicious moment in the excellent 1998 comedy “Le Dîner de Cons” where the imminent visit of an inspector has the tax-avoiding leading man scrambling to stuff all his expensive artwork into a broom closet.

“Ostentation is a godsend for the fiscal authorities,” says a leading expert. But in some places, flaunting wealth is de rigueur. The Principality of Monaco actively courts URIs – “Ultra Rich Individuals” – who help fuel that casino “country” on the Med. But now, even URIs are facing straitened circumstances. The Economist, which recently ran a special report on “The Rich - Under Attack,” notes that luxury goods spending has plummeted some 34 %. “Bling on a budget,” apparently, is now the way of the wealthy. The Economist’s cover illustration is a Delacroix spin-off: French Revolutionaries led by a bare-breasted maid carrying a “Get the Rich!” placard (check the anachronous Blackberry on one of the fallen aristos). Poor dears.

Okay, there are the rich, the super-rich, and then there’s you and me. For Slumdogs who aren’t yet Millionaires, paying-to-poo in the relative comfort of a Mumbai latrine might be the height of luxury. Somewhere between that – and paying £35,000 for a diamond-studded cocktail in London’s Movida nightclub – is where I’d situate the luxury range for most readers. So here’s a suggestion: start thinking of luxury in strictly personal terms, instead of what you think those famous Joneses are up to, for you’ll never be able to keep up with them, and will be unhappy even trying.

Instead, carve out your personal luxury space and revel in it: a distinctive Belgian “beer-of-the-month” perhaps, taken in a local bistro, in a part of Brussels you don’t yet know. A €4.50 day-long public transport ticket, to crisscross the city in the quest for that special beer… (Note: non-alcoholic pleasures are permissible, but they escape me for the moment).

Here’s my personal cheapskate luxury favourite: find a seaside (or lakeside) location facing east, make a thermos of your preferred hot beverage, buy or bake some yummy pastries, and get up early enough to watch the sun rise. Variation: trade the breakfast fare for smoked salmon on fresh bread, accompanied with appropriate bubbly, and watch the setting sun opposite Ostend, or the ever-changing play of light over Mont Saint Michel.

It will set you back a couple of euros, but so what? If unstructured time, the sound of silence, and good company are precious commodities, you’ll be able to enjoy countless luxuries that those “URIs” can only dream of. Webster’s alternate definition of luxury: “a pleasure out of the ordinary allowed to oneself.” Doesn’t sound terribly sinful to me.

1920s beach scene from RootsWeb, Ancestry.com (Creative Commons)

Faraway Fields of Lake Wobegon

Checking in after my Christmas-New Year's hiatus far from internet connections.  Actually, far from publicly-available internet connections that were not closed over the holidays.  I've been in provincial France.

On our drive back towards Brussels, we got into range of BBC on our car radio, and a couple of reports provided food for thought.  One was on Britain's (or, I should say Britons') self image in years of late: rather glum, with a tendency in the media to dwell on bad news (teenage knife crime, binge drinking, loutish behavior, etc).

But to a large number of Germans, who gather for such rituals as Scottish country dancing and other rites connected with Great Britain, the United Kingdom is the promised land.  We all know the old Irish expression "Faraway fields look green."  Sometimes you have to travel beyond the confines of your own borders to appreciate your country for what it's worth - or to see it as others see it.  That's a running theme in this blog, of course.  An expatriate view of America and the world from Europe.

So if the BBC report showed Brits how much their low societal esteem is unjustified, another BBC report showed how individual Brits have a rather high regard for themselves.  In part, this is the "Lake Wobegon Effect," Garrison Keillor's imaginary place "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

According to the BBC, in matters of intelligence, civility, and driving skills, 60% of the population place themselves in the top 20%.  I would guess that this doesn't happen exclusively in Britain or in Lake Wobegon.

But if people put themselves (or their children) in the top bracket, why do they often sell their country short, or think that things have to be better elsewhere?  Though it can be carried too far, a bit of international comparative shopping is healthy.  Especially if you live in a state of mind that makes you think your country is better than anywhere else.

So why don't we resolve to do this in 2009: use those "sister city" links for some real world uses.  LIke looking for best practices?  American city planners could check out how European cities are taking on the automobile and making downtowns accessible by public transportation.

French people, fond of complaining about everything, including their world-class medical system, might be sent on an internship to the US, where they could navigate America's health-care "situation."

Short of these exchanges, maybe we should all just admit that other people/countries might do things better than we do, or conversely that sometimes things just aren't so bad in our own countries as we've convinced ourselves they are.  Either way, we just have to open our minds that there is no monopoly on ways to run a country or society properly.

Avuncular American's First Anniversary

With all the excitement over the elections in the States, I almost let the anniversary of my first year of blogging slip by.  Looking back at my first posts in November 2007, I see that I wrote a good deal more about Iraq than I have done recently (that is likely to change once Barack Obama is inaugurated).  There were several posts on the complicated Belgian political situation, which though it has calmed somewhat, remains complicated and never-ending.  It's the national sport.

One topic - torture, as in US practice of - is one that I would much prefer never having had to write about.  If today's article by Mark Benjamin in Salon is right - "Obama's Plans For Probing Bush Torture" - we may all be learning more about the truth behind Bush's assertion that "This government does not torture people."  In the past year of blogging, I've noticed that whenever I do a post about torture, much of my readership seems to fade away.  Denial?

During this strange post-election, lame duck, transition, phony war period, there will be plenty to write about.  Like many others who supported the candidacy of Barack Obama, I will be scrutinizing the news coming out of Transition HQ, to make sure that realpolitik does not trump the wishes of real people who elected the next president.

But the advent of a new, popularly elected administration, one which has to undo so much that harmed the very foundations of the United States, should account for a slight change of tone in the months ahead.  After all, "avuncular" is in my URL: "In the manner of an uncle, pertaining to an uncle, hence, kind, genial, benevolent or tolerant" according to Wiktionary.

I think Barack Obama should bring out the avuncular in me.

The Pride of America, The Joy of the World

Turning on the BBC this morning after a very short sleep, John McCain's voice provided the good news (from The Telegraph):

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together.  Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans.

With that, the incredible journey of Barack Obama to the White House became fact.  John McCain ended his campaign in a very honorable way; francophones would call it "très fair-play."  Now the challenge will be to enlist him and his supporters in the monumental task of rebuilding America after the lost Bush years.

TV audiences saw the emotion on the faces of the hundreds of thousands of Americans gathering in Chicago, Washington, and in lots of small towns across the country.  Joy, hope, pride, relief.

Last night a few thousand of us gathered in Brussels for an election-eve party - expat Americans, Belgians, but also people from every corner of the international diaspora present in Europe's capital.  My job as the "Obama cheerleader" (debate would be too dignified a term for our performance in front of such a crowd) was made easier by the numbers; Obama's landslide in the US looked mild compared to the overwhelming support he had in the hotel ballroom last night.

The after-action interviews of us expat Americans will soon taper off, and the brainstorming now begins: later today I will attend one of what will be many sessions in European and other capitals on prospects for renewal of American ties with the world under an Obama Administration.  My plan: go into Obama mode: listen to my European hosts - Green think tank The Heinrich Boll Foundation - and hear what they prescribe for bringing the United States into the fold of countries seeking solutions to the world's grave environmental problems of climate change and resource constriction.

Wonkiness will abound, and I will be as active a participant as my couple hours' sleep permits.  But my heart will be in places like Chicago - or Nairobi, where Barack Obama's victory has been declared a national holiday.  It's party time.

I don't care if some commentators want to downplay the Obama-JFK connection.  For millions in the US and around the world, Barack Obama's election to the US Presidency surpasses the historical milestone of Irish Catholic Kennedy's election in 1960.

In my parents' native Ireland, for years thousands of homes sported photos of a sort of holy trinity: the Pope (whoever he was at the time), hero of Irish independence Michael Collins, and President John F. Kennedy.  I expect that President Barack Obama's portrait will be ubiquitous - and not just in Kenya - in simple homes the world over for a long time to come.

And birth registries throughout the world: get ready for a deluge of little ones named Barack!

(photo: Bridges For Obama)

Foreign Fixation With US Election: Free Public Diplomacy, Citizen Style

If the reaction of Belgians to the US presidential campaign is typical of publics throughout Europe and the rest of the world - a recent multi-country poll commissioned by The Guardian and other papers shows that Belgians are among the world's most pro-Obama and anti-Bush - then the United States is enjoying a massive public diplomacy bonanza.  For free.  Thanks to overseas Americans.

For the past several months, but especially in the last weeks leading up to November 4, the services of the Democrats Abroad Belgium (DAB) "Speakers Bureau" have been much in demand.  It might sound impressive, but the "bureau" is just a handful of regular American citizens who happen to be conversant in one or more of Belgium's three official languages: Dutch, French, or German.  English too: in this international atmosphere, it is often the lingua franca of think tanks, educational institutions, discussion groups and news media following the US election.

If we've been swept up in the media frenzy (last night it was the multilingual TV channel "Euronews" filming a bunch of us at a local pub), imagine the toll that this is taking on the Republican.  I say "the" Republican, since the stalwart head of the GOP group in Belgium seems to be a one-man show, trotted out to debate Democrats who put forward one of at least a half dozen debaters who share the burden.

The questions naturally betray the pro-Democratic bias of many of the audiences.  Weary of eight years of Bush unilateralism, terrified at the prospect of a US-led worldwide depression, Europeans want to see an invigorated America under new management.  Luckily for us Dems, this coincides perfectly with our point of view.  European audiences have to be reminded, however, of the ugly underside of American democracy: voter suppression.  Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have written "Block The Vote" in the current Rolling Stone, have also recorded a BBC documentary where they show the myriad ways in which millions - millions - of Americans are prevented from voting.

To Europeans, where in countries like Belgium voting is mandatory, this anti-democratic shrinkage of the electorate is inconceivable.  People receive notices inviting them to vote, and turnout exceeds 90%.  Belgium may have more than its share of political complexity, but gaming the actual voting system is not one of them.  In France, a much larger democracy with far-flung overseas territories, somehow millions of people vote with paper ballots in boxes with slots at the top, which are tabulated by citizen volunteers in time for results announced on the evening TV news.

In the US, meanwhile, the State Department's Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy is organizing the I-VOTE program to promote foreign understanding of the immensely complex and seemingly jury-rigged US electoral system (image above from I-VOTE).  Good initiative, the kind that is done every four years in the US and abroad at its embassies, where local officials, academics, and journalists are invited to straw polls, election night parties, and - depending on the time zone - morning-after breakfasts.

This year, the positive impact of the Obama phenomenon is being multiplied many times over by the kind of citizen public diplomacy us Democrats (and that sole Republican!) are waging on our own dime here in Brussels.  If the Democrats led by Obama win - and especially if the election is shown to be fair and square - the beneficiaries will be all Americans, for the world will see that American democracy is not just a PR story.

"With liberty and justice for all" - so ends the American Pledge of Allegiance.  In his essay on the subject for the Heritage Foundation, libertarian Ward Connerly wrote in 1996 that in America, "we are guaranteed the right to vote."  Would that it were so.  Ten years later, Constitutional lawyer Garret Epps in Salon wrote "You have no right to vote," a sad chronicle of the ambivalent American approach to that most fundamental of democratic practices.

My wife and I have just sent in our absentee ballots.  I wish I could say that we had a good feeling, but our sense of patriotic duty is marred by a realization that many things can go wrong, just like they did in elections past in our benighted County in Florida - Broward-of-the-hanging-chads. Maybe her hyphenated name lacks a crucial hyphen - disqualified!  Maybe our Belgian postmark will be smudged - suspect... discard!  Maybe, as in 2002, the county will just lose 100,000 absentee ballots.  For the sake of American democracy - not to speak of the US image in the world - there has to be a better way.

Americans Abroad: Info For Expatriate Voters

In the interest of getting out the vote from Americans abroad, I have taken the liberty of posting much of a very helpful email from Democrats Abroad.  One helpful site they don't mention - www.VotePoke.org - tells you if you're registered at your Stateside address (if you have one).

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This is a reminder to the millions of Americans around the globe - and anyone who knows one of those Americans - time is running out to request your absentee ballot and vote in November. The process requires voters to mail in a request, receive a ballot by mail, and mail back the completed ballot. That's three rounds of airmail. So, to vote from abroad and help take our country back, take immediate action.

Time is running out. For quick and easy ballot applications, go directly to www.VoteFromAbroad.org. Check fast approaching state deadlines now! [note: a list of deadlines is available at the above link]. Many states allow you to verify your application status online. Use this easy link through our Voter Action Center.

Find your nearest U.S. consulate or embassy at www.usembassy.gov.

Voter Central Hotline: Voting problems? Rejected application? Confusing messages from your local voting official? Please send all your questions to votercentral@democratsabroad.org.

STILL HAVEN'T REGISTERED FOR YOUR ABSENTEE BALLOT?? www.VoteFromAbroad.org

Voter Registration: Deadlines, Alerts and Important Info for the Overseas Citizen:

The overseas electoral system in the US is at best confusing, and frequently impossible to sort out. Federal elections are run by the states, and they do not have uniform rules amongst the states and too frequently even within a state. Local election official frequently have great discretion. The following attempts to provide some clarity on issues relevant to voters in the next month.

Registration Deadlines
•   Earliest Deadlines: No state has a registration deadline before October 6.
•   Meeting the Deadline by Fax: Most states allow the deadline to be met by faxing the original signed FPCA as long as the original hardcopy is mailed and received before the ballots are counted.
     Exceptions: New York, Alabama, and Wyoming do not accept faxes. Alabama has a registration deadline of October 24. New York has a registration deadline of October 10. Wyoming has a registration deadline of October 6. The only way to meet the deadlines for NY, AL, and WY is to ensure that your original FPCA arrives in the local election official’s office by mail no later than the deadline. (New York and Wyoming will also accept them by courier services).
•   Later Deadlines: Some states have a later deadline registration deadline.

Ballot Request Deadlines: How to request a ballot if you are already registered
•   The same FPCA form is also used to request a ballot. No state has a ballot request deadline before October 6.
•   Some states have a later deadline for people who have previously registered as overseas voters.
•   Most states allow the deadline to be met by faxing the original signed FPCA as long as the original hardcopy is mailed and received before the ballots are counted.
•   Some states have a later registration deadline.

Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB)
•   Use this back-up ballot if your state ballot does not arrive in time to return it using your local mail system.
•   If you have not yet sent in your FPCA, you should:
     Fax your FPCA (unless you vote in AL, NY, or WY); and mail the original along with the FWAB. The FWAB must go in a blank envelope that is referred to as a security envelope. The security envelope, the voter declaration and the FPCA should all be mailed together from outside the United States. (If you are in the Uniformed Services or the Merchant Marines you can mail it from within the U.S.).
•   If you have already registered and requested your ballot, only mail the security envelope with the voted ballot inside and the voter declaration.
•   Foreign Postmark: All states will accept a foreign postmark as evidence of submission form outside the U.S.
•   Consular Stamp: All states have been informed by the U.S. State Department that they should accept a consular stamp as evidence of submission from outside the U.S.
•   Commercial Courier: Some states will also accept a commercial courier service waybill as evidence of submission from outside the U.S. Using a courier service should be a last resort. Alabama explicitly refuses to accept materials sent to them by commercial couriers, such as Federal Express and DHL.

U.S. Citizens who never lived in the U.S.
•   Federal law does not require any state to extend voting eligibility to a person who has never resided in that state on the basis that one or both of the person’s parents formerly resided in that state. Many states, however, do.
•   Disenfranchised: Children born abroad to voters otherwise eligible to vote in Alaska, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are disenfranchised by state law.
•   Enfranchised: Children born abroad to voters eligible to vote in Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin are specifically enfranchised by state law, i.e. they are allowed to register and vote.
•   All other states are silent on the issue. Voters in this situation should send in an FPCA; if it is rejected, they should notify votercentral@democratsabroad.org.

Visiting the U.S.
•   If you live abroad, but are currently in the U.S., you can call your local election official to find out if there are any additional voting options available.
•   If you are still abroad, but plan to be visiting the US on Election Day, you should mail your Federal Write-In Ballot BEFORE you enter the U.S.

Fax Numbers
•   If the toll free fax number from your country is not working, please use the following number: +1 703 693-5527.
•   The FVAP know that several of these numbers, including the one from China, are not working, and they are investigating.

MYTH: “If I vote, the IRS will hassle me.”
Voting in US Federal elections does not affect the determination of tax liability or tax residence. You will not hear from the IRS because you voted in a Federal election, i.e. President, Senate, or House of Representatives.

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There.  I will not accept any complaints from those who fail to vote and are unhappy with the outcome.