Closing Strong on a Historic Election Year
A Message from International Chair Martha McDevitt-Pugh
We’ve been hard at work all year, finding and reaching Americans abroad all over the world, educating them about their right to vote and why it matters. We’ve been providing the information and tools to register to vote and helping US citizens return their ballots in time to be counted.
As we enter the final day of this historic election (voter protection and curing notwithstanding) I want to take a moment to reflect on everything Dems Abroad has done to elect our first woman President and Democrats up and down the ballot, to advance our freedoms and turn the page on the orange man and his agenda of hate.
Our members are based in 190 countries on 6 continents around the world. The energy and interest from people in our work was palpable, and our membership grew by 14%
We saw this energy in the form of engagement, volunteerism and contributions to support our mission. We raised one million dollars from 11,300 individual donors and the DNC too!
The money we raise goes directly towards our GOTV and voter support activities: phone banking, texting, canvassing, online events, in-person events, voter education, and voter support.
Our phone banking team made 233,168 calls to Abroad voters, averaging 4,500/day.
After we finished these calls, we supported stateside phone banks and made an additional 27,845 calls to voters back home. We sent 244,000 targeted text messages to voters abroad as well.
We invested in paid advertising to reach Americans abroad not yet in our orbit. We adapted as access to social media platforms shifted beneath our feet. Our Google ads campaign reached 14.3 million people and our podcast advertising achieved 11.5 million impressions.
Our members remain our greatest strength. Over 170 are certified voter assistant experts and support voters via live chat, email, and live “Zoom Room” assistance meetings.
Since June 1 we have had 34,277 requests for assistance from voters. Our live Zoom Rooms – which offer private, individualized support from a voting expert for an individual voter on their specific issues – have helped 4,118 voters as of today.
We held thousands of GOTV, voter support, and registration events run by our country committees all over the world.
We’ve run a robust influencer outreach campaign featuring Samuel L Jackson, Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, Jane Fonda, Kyra Sedgwick, Ashley Park, Kevin Bacon, Alfre Woodard, Robert DeNiro and others speaking directly to Americans abroad about the importance of voting from abroad.
Our seminal Sept 5 “Americans Abroad for Harris-Walz” event brought the energy of the Chicago convention to Americans around the world, Participating in the Harris Zoom community phenomena was a flagship event – 5.5 hours long, 75 speakers, watched by over 33,000 people, raising $90,000 and leading to 6,800 new voters registering to vote from abroad. We were featured by Oprah at her United for America event with Vice President Harris. Our Vamos con Kamala bilingual event featuring Lin Manuel Miranda and Eva Longoria led to over 300 new voters requesting their ballots.
And we’re still going! As I write this, our Comms team is posting critical voter information to our social media channels. Our voter support and GOTV teams continue helping voters address issues and return their ballots, and our voter protection team is actively fighting attempts to disenfranchise our voters. We will continue our GOTV work until the polls close and it’s too late for a voter to meet their UOCAVA return deadlines, and we will continue our voter protection work to ensure that legal and eligible votes cast are counted.
The members of DA are true heroes in this election and the fight for democracy and I am so proud and humbled to be your Chair.