Signing Up a Remote Electorate for November

Much of the voter registration drive is being conducted on the Internet. In addition to the official site of the Federal Voting Assistance Program (www.fvap.gov), several new sites have been established to assist voter registration, including TellAnAmericanToVote.com, a nonpartisan site set up by several Americans living in Amsterdam and their Dutch friends.

"Americans living abroad don't vote," said Robert Checkoway, a Boston native and co-founder of the Web site, who hopes to change that. Interviewed by telephone from an Amsterdam bookshop where he was helping to register votes last week, Checkoway said about 3,000 people had downloaded voter registration forms from the Web site.

In Mexico last Thursday, Diana Kerry spoke at an event attended by about 100 U.S. citizens, most of whom were registering to cast absentee votes for the first time. Kerry, a schoolteacher who has taught in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, said she had been "beating the Bushes for Americans" in her recent appearances in Scotland, France, Germany, Austria, Ireland and Canada.

"The energy is huge," Kerry said in an interview. "Everywhere I go, people say, 'I have to vote this time. How do I do it? What can I do?' "

Susannah Glusker, of Democrats Abroad, said that as of Thursday, before the lunch with Kerry, about 500 U.S. citizens in Mexico City had registered to vote, five times more than in any other year she could remember.

Among those who turned out to see Kerry was Joe Nash, 92, who has lived in Mexico for half a century and helped found Democrats Abroad here to push the candidacy of Adlai Stevenson in 1952. "Definitely, there will be more voting from abroad this time," he said. "What happened in Florida was sickening."

Larry Rubin, a Republican activist in Mexico City, said he was confident that larger numbers of American voters abroad would favor his party. He said many U.S. expatriates tend to be business leaders and Republicans.

Republican efforts to turn out the vote here were "just gaining momentum," Rubin added.