Activists urge 183,000 Americans living in Metro to vote, ‘stop Trump’
U.S. Democrats are hoping to rally the almost 200,000 Americans who live in Vancouver full- or parttime to vote in the U.S. midterm elections. They say Americans living abroad could tip the balance in tightly contested fights for seats for the U.S. Congress, the Senate and state governors.
American Tammy Flynn Seybold doesn’t want to assume, as many did during the 2016 U.S. election, that Donald Trump couldn’t again come out on top during the U.S. midterm elections in November. So she put on a floppy starsand-stripes hat and waved a sign at noon traffic on Georgia Street across from the Trump Hotel, urging her fellow Americans living in Vancouver to make sure they vote.
“People need to get off the couch and not be somewhat apathetic and assume reason will prevail,” said the paintings conservator who has lived in Canada since 1993 and has dual citizenship. She is among the estimated 183,000 Americans living full- or part-time in Metro Vancouver, according to Cameron Mitchell Jr. of Democrats Abroad Vancouver.
“Two per cent of Americans living in Vancouver voted in the 2016 election,” said the writer/ actor who was born in Los Angeles but has mostly lived in Canada since he was 11 years old. He said five per cent of Americans living in Toronto and 11 per cent of those in London, England, voted.
“So we have to get those (Vancouver) numbers up,” he said.
He and Flynn Seybold said they assumed most expats would be opposed to Trump.
It’s not known how many of the 183,000 would vote Republican or Democrat. But the U.S. political activists living in Vancouver held the lunchtime rally, as their news release said, to “stop Trump.”
Mitchell said it would be great if the Democrats could get a majority in the House of Representatives and “by some miracle,” the Senate, too.
Mitchell said every American has the right and obligation to vote in the election and they ’re encouraging all expats to register before the looming deadlines and to vote, even if they haven’t in decades.
He said only 22,000 votes separated Trump and his opponent, Hillary Clinton, so the votes from Americans abroad could make a difference.
Mitchell said one million of the nine million Americans living abroad live in Canada, the highest of any country.
Elections will choose every member of Congress, 35 senators and 36 state governors.