Devangshu Datta: Scouring for American voters

WORM'S EYE VIEW

It was early September when the US presidential campaign arrived in Khan Market and Jorbagh. These are among Delhi's favourite shopping centres for expatriates.

In many shop-windows, there were printed notices urging US citizens to register as overseas voters.

The poster was issued by what seemed to be a bi-partisan non-governmental organisation; it listed the various bureaucratic channels through which US citizens travelling or residing overseas can register to vote in an American election.

That anybody went to this bother in New Delhi is itself a sign of the desperately close nature of this election. No stone is being left unturned to unearth voters. In places like Israel, Mexico, Australia and the Caribbean, there are large numbers of US expatriates. In Delhi, there would be few in comparison.

And, given the peculiar mechanics of the US electoral process, even 200 votes could end up being decisive. The bottomline is that less than 600 votes decided the last election in a nation with over 205 million registered voters.

Never mind the long, convoluted story behind that statistic "" it's too well-known to reiterate. The point is, it's worth scouring the Amazon Delta and the Masai Mara for US voters.

In historic terms, US swing states have frequently been decided by very low margins and in an electoral college system that can lead to strange but logical outcomes.

The key in a two-horse electoral college system like America is to win the big states. A single narrow margin win in a big state may outweigh two losses by big margins in smaller states. Thus, it is possible to win fewer states and fewer votes and still become POTUS (President of the United States).

This has happened so many times that the list is too long to append. Suffice it to say the current incumbent lost the popular vote in 2000 and was declared a winner at the electoral college level; he was by no means the first POTUS to lose the popular vote.

The overseas voter can be a trump card "" overseas voters count as residents of the last US state where they had a valid address. If there are many residents of New York in Israel (as indeed there are because of Jewish demographics and dual citizenship rules), getting them to vote in Tel Aviv could swing the election.

Similarly, there are Californians and Texans resident in Mexico, and Floridians resident in Latin America and the islands. And those are all big states.

There is another factor worth considering. This is the most opulently funded political campaign ever "" both candidates have set records in fund-raising. Between them, the two candidates have thus ensured that every conventional communication channel is already saturated with campaign-related material.

It makes sense to try and turn out the overseas vote "" it may be mission-critical in the context of direct marketing. The economics could also be favourable vis-à-vis turning out equivalent numbers of domestic residents. The US has low voter turnouts (48.5 per cent of registered voters in the last elections).

It's just too much of a bother for the average citizen to go down to the booth. Given the service fee differentials between the US and the Third World, it may be less expensive to trawl Delhi than to drag unwilling domestic voters out on the first Tuesday in November.

Of course, it's impossible to ever be sure about these things. Even if Florida is won by, say, 300 votes and there are 800 Floridians who voted out of Israel, you will never be quite sure how much they changed the equation.

But it's worth a try. Frankly, I'm all for it if the overseas voter swings the elections. He, or she, is more likely to be in tune with global public opinion. And the outcome this time is much too important to be left merely to the residents of Grand Rapids or Boca Raton.