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Democrats Abroad held the First Democratic Global Presidential Primary

By webreporter on Feb 22, 2008 in POLITICS

From February 5 to 12, 2008, held a by Internet, fax, mail and in-person at Voting Centers in 34 countries around the globe. This will be the FIRST global primary ever!

Barack Obama won the Democrats Abroad global primary with a reported 65% of the vote in results announced today, giving him 11 straight victories in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Although the online global Democratic primary took place in cyberspace, the primary was held in conjunction with a series of regional global caucus meetings that took place in several locations throughout the globe for the purpose of choosing 22 delegates to represent Democrats Abroad at the Democratic National Convention.

To vote in the U.S. Presidential Elections in November, all overseas American voters must register with the local voting authorities in the place where they last lived in the US. This process, though, has been automated on Democrats Abroad's voter registration Web site, VoteFromAbroad.org.

Everyone Counts, a company based in San Diego that specializes in online voting, is running the Internet voting for the Democrat primary for overseas residents. Everyone Counts handled the voting by Internet for local elections in British cities in 2003 and 2007 as well as the online voting for the Australian election in November, handling voting by soldiers stationed in Iraq and other spots overseas.

There are no official figures on the number of Americans residing outside of the United States because of the difficulty in keeping track of a largely transient group, some of whom do not alert officials that they have moved overseas. Estimates from both political parties put the number at six to seven million.

At 6.5 million, that would make a conglomeration of the U.S. citizens living abroad the 13th most populous state just ahead of Massachusetts, but the Democrats living abroad will get just 22 delegates, the same number as South Dakota and just 5 percent of the California delegation. California is the most populous state in the United States, with 35 million residents; South Dakota is the 46th, with 750,000 residents.

So it appears that the Democratic Global Presidential Primary was a total success for the voters abroad and Senator Barack Obama who, after this 11th straight win seems to be unstoppable!