They 'make sure' our interests as expat are being covered.
I personally never had any trouble voting while I was living abroad. It was slightly inconvenient to track down a fellow American to witness it, as required by the absentee ballot I was issued, but no big deal.
Makes me wonder what would happen if a significant number of expats would agree on some low-population state to remotely take over. How far could bureaucratic friction be increased to fend off that kind of "attack"?
It's incredibly frustrating how even when living overseas you have to have some sort of residential address for many things. I use my father's address for this purpose, which is useful since he lives in a state with no local income tax, reducing some of my paperwork.
1. With my time difference, I'd have to call my reps at a time when I'd normally be getting ready to sleep just to catch them in the morning.
2. In addition to that, not everyone has good internet connection. Especially if you live in a remote area. Prior to a year ago, my internet connection at home was fairly slow.
3. Yes, I'll admit that I forgot about Skype since it wasn't reliable for me in the first few years I was here. However, cost is cost. And having to manage Skype Credits, which I'd never use elsewhere, is just an extra burden compared to what it was like back in the States.
And aside from that, it still does not detract from my original statement:
> the effectiveness of getting your voice heard by your "representatives" (the reps from your last permanent residence in the US) is much more difficult
It's not just the contacting. It's also getting them to even care because you don't live on US soil. None of what I'm saying is an excuse, and I don't know why you seem intent on not acknowledging that it can be legitimately difficult.
As for caring about your opinion, why would they care any less about you compared to any other voter?
I said the caring part out of frustration with the current system. I've always felt that if they couldn't map you to a US address within their jurisdiction, then they'd know that you had less of an ability to influence other voters around you via petitions, grassroots campaigns, etc. So discounting your opinion wouldn't matter as much.
As for petitions and such, I imagine that would be much less of a factor now with the rise of social networks and such. But the views of our elected officials may take some time to catch up to that.
We can do this for any issue which is not related to state/district borders. No single member of Congress represents urban Americans, or rural Americans, or WoW players, or hair stylists. Would we say that they pay taxes without representation? Of course not. Why are expats any different?
I lived abroad for several years and I never felt like I was without representation. I voted and had elected officials the same as my fellow Americans. The degree to which I'm represented in Congress (i.e. nobody is really answerable to me, but I can write to them and get a form letter back if I feel like wasting some time, and once every couple of years I get to pretend like my vote matters) was no different at that time than it is now.
Clearly you are unfamiliar with the level of gerrymandering we have implemented, which makes it feel unfair when a distinct property owning group (say, retirees in Costa Rica) don't have their own gerrymandered pet politician just like the yuppies or inner city poor or rednecks have in congress.
Unevenly enforcing a corrupt system feels worse than merely having a corrupt system.
Sure, we still get to vote, but when you make up less than 3% of your representative's constituency, you're even more screwed then the average person.
The general issue of indirect democracy not representing the will of the voters is a fundamental one and not solvable, also goes to far for a discussion like this. Side remark: JFKs Profiles in Courage is a great book on the topic.
You yourself stated above that they don't?
I got your argumentation as "I never was represented anyway, so not being represented as expat did change nothing". But the difference is that the other americans have representatives that are supposed to act in their interests. Expats have only the afterthought of being american and that one could think about them sometimes, since they vote.
Who are the elected officials who are supposed to represent them? I do not think that there is one, that is not how your system works.
The elected officials who represent a given expat are those from the district where the expat is registered to vote. For example, when I lived in France, I was still registered to vote in Wisconsin, so I voted for Wisconsin Congressmen, and they are who I would contact if I felt like wasting my time by making my opinion known to legislators.
The article is trying to say that because expats don't have any representatives exclusively for them that they do not have representation at all. I find this to be absurd. Yes, small interest groups have trouble getting action in the legislature, but that's hardly unique to expats, and nobody says that e.g. janitors pay taxes without representation just because there's no Janitor Congressman.