Jewish-American group urges US citizens in Israel to vote as absentee ballots can impact swing states

U.S.-based Jewish organizations are working to get out the vote among Americans living in Israel ahead of the November election, which comes weeks after the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. 

Nathan Diament, the executive director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, said his organization has coordinated with the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and partnered with Yeshiva University, a private Orthodox Jewish university in New York, on outreach instructing young Americans taking their gap years in Israel on how to request their absentee ballots and vote from abroad.

"First of all, it's important, from our point of view, for every American citizen, no matter where they are, to hopefully participate in the election," Diament told Fox News Digital. "You know, this past year has obviously been a very intense, serious and historic year in terms of what's going on in Israel as it continues to battle against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran itself. We have friends and family who are there, whose lives are really on the line. And so it's really important for Americans there who have the right to vote to, again, participate, because the United States is Israel's most important ally."

He estimated that there are a few thousand Jewish Americans currently in Israel taking their gap year, typically done between high school and college. His own son is one of those students this year.

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The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (or Orthodox Union), which represents more than 1,000 Orthodox Jewish synagogues around the U.S. as well as several hundred Jewish K-12 schools, also works on educational resources targeting another demographic – the few hundred thousand Jewish American immigrants who permanently relocated to Israel – so they, too, can participate in the 2024 election. 

The deadline to request absentee ballots is approaching for several battleground states. Of the about 420,000 Jewish Pennsylvanians, Diament said that some studying or living in Israel "could have an impact on the vote" in their communities around Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and even Scranton.

"Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in the last election by an 80,000 vote margin," Diament said. "So, you know, a shift in the American Jewish vote in Pennsylvania by, you know, several thousand or 10,000 or more votes could be very, very significant in this election." 

The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in January urged Americans living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza to check their voter registration to provide for enough time to participate in the upcoming 2024 federal elections. As the U.S. does not offer in-person voting at embassies or consulates abroad, U.S. citizens are encouraged to vote by absentee ballot if they cannot meet their state's in-person voting requirements. 

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At the time, the embassy noted how "many U.S. federal elections for the House of Representatives and Senate have been decided by a margin smaller than the number of ballots cast by absentee voters." 

The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem said all states are required to count every absentee ballot "that is valid and reaches local election officials by the absentee ballot receipt deadline."

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told Fox News Digital that U.S. citizens living outside the United States can register to vote and vote absentee while living overseas. Students living overseas for an extended period during an election season need to vote absentee and complete a Federal Post Card Application at FVAP.gov to request an absentee ballot, the spokesperson said, adding that voting residency will continue to be the student's last legal residence prior to leaving the U.S. to study abroad.

The State Department spokesperson said U.S. citizens voting from overseas should check FVAP.gov for their state’s deadlines and more information about how to return their ballot.

"An American living abroad can most easily request an absentee ballot either through the team that we have set up at our center in Jerusalem or, again, they could go to the U.S. embassy or consulate in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv," Diament said. "And as long as you show your ID and you get your absentee ballot appropriately, then you just need to send it in a timely way. It's really not that complicated." 

Jeremy Kazzaz, executive director of the Beacon Coalition, a nonprofit focused on getting out the Jewish vote locally on the ground in Pittsburgh, said U.S. citizens, whether traveling out of state or abroad during an election season, should send their absentee ballots as soon as possible to be included in initial counts.

"The mail system gets bogged down around election time because it's not just all the ballots that are going through the mail, but it is the 5 billion pieces of political mail that everybody is getting on a day-to-day basis," Kazzaz told Fox News Digital. "And then you add to that the chaos and disruptions of multiple hurricanes going through the Eastern Seaboard at this time. And so the best practice is to do all of this as early as humanly possible."

While Diament said it is confidential which candidates who members of the Orthodox Union support, he pointed to polling done by Israeli outlets and pollsters on the ground among Israelis and Americans as signaling a shift toward Republican Donald Trump, especially in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

"You know, frankly, that is not matched in the American Jewish population as a whole. The American Jewish population, by and large, is pretty liberal. And so, traditionally, the Democrat wins a majority, sometimes a very, very large majority. But we've done polling and others have done polling this year among American Jews here in the United States," Diament said. "What we've seen, at least so far, is that while Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate is ahead among the American Jewish vote in general, she's not ahead by as large a margin as the Democratic candidate, you know, has been traditionally."

Diament argued that rising antisemitism in the U.S. could be one contributing factor.

"It's a different kind of election in the wake of what's going on over the past year for American Jews," Diament said. "We've seen the terrible surge in antisemitism in the aftermath of the Oct. 7th terrorist attacks. And that's another dimension, which American Jews have to really stand up and hold government officials accountable and make sure that they are being responsive to us, to make sure we're guaranteed our rights of freedom of religion in this country." 

Regarding his son and his sons' friends taking their gap year in Israel, Diament said that "in some ways, they feel more comfortable and secure than some of their friends who are on some American university campuses." 

"Their lives are not being threatened, obviously, the way people on the ground in Israel are by foreign militaries," he said. "But there are a lot of campuses where young American Jews are really being … psychologically threatened and personally threatened."