[Source: Reuters]

Bob Vallier, a Paris resident who has mostly lived outside the United States for the past 30 years, has already voted in his home state of Michigan for the Nov. 5 election.

Vallier’s vote, and the ballots of other Americans overseas, may be crucial in the tight races of battleground states like his. Michigan is one of the election’s most competitive states, with latest polls showing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris holding a slight edge over Republican rival Donald Trump.

The Democratic National Committee estimates that 1.6 million U.S. voters abroad are eligible to vote in one of the seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that will likely determine the outcome of the election.

The group is believed to favor Democrats. Among people who used Vote From Abroad, a nonpartisan voter support tool linked to the DNC, three-quarters of overseas voters in the 2020 election said they were Democrats.

So for the first time in a presidential election the DNC has given Democrats Abroad funding – around $300,000 – to help register Americans overseas to vote and ramp up its mail-in voting operations and other efforts. It has taken out ads on social media urging Americans abroad to send in their ballots.