The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration Thursday over a rushed change to the federal form overseas Americans use to request absentee ballots, accusing the Pentagon of quietly stripping voting access from citizens who’ve never lived in the United States.
According to The Guardian, the Federal Post Card Application previously let overseas voters check a box if they were U.S. citizens born abroad who’d never lived stateside, a category 38 states and Washington, D.C. allow to vote in at least some elections. In August, as the deadline to send out overseas ballots approached, the Pentagon pushed through two emergency requests eliminating that option, which the Office of Management and Budget approved almost immediately, NPR first reported this week.
“Trump and Republicans are so desperate to hang on to power that they are trying to eliminate the way some American citizens abroad register to vote and request mail ballots,” said DNC Chair Ken Martin in a statement.
Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat of the U.S. Vote Foundation warned the change could confuse eligible voters into abandoning their ballots entirely, even though nothing in federal law requiring overseas citizens’ right to vote has actually changed. “Changing the form does not change that right. It changes whether a voter recognizes themselves on it,” she said.
Pentagon official Sean O’Keefe defended the rushed timeline in a letter to OMB, arguing the old form “may confuse voters about the information they are required to provide under federal law” and that the 90-day election window left no time for normal review. DNC lawyers called that justification hollow, noting in their filing that the government has years of experience handling exactly this issue.
“[The government] has at least fifteen years of experience issuing guidance to U.S. citizens born and remaining abroad, reviewing public comments concerning use of the FPCA by these applicants, and modifying the FPCA to best serve these eligible voters,” the lawsuit states.
An estimated 2.2 million Americans abroad are eligible to vote, mostly concentrated in Canada and the U.K., though only about 11 percent cast ballots in 2024. How many have never lived in the U.S. is unclear, a 2016 government estimate put the number near 11,590, though DNC lawyers believe it’s grown since.
Republicans have been fighting to restrict voting on a number of fronts over the last year. A landmark lawsuit last year sought to abolish grace periods in every state that allows mail ballots to be received after Election Day if postmarked by the proper date; the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the state laws. More recently, President Donald Trump ordered the Postal Service to block mail-in ballots for states that didn’t meet a long list of compliance rules, which federal courts put on hold.
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