Here’s a tale of two voters. My American wife and I live in Paris, and she voted in this spring’s French presidential elections, but is also voting in a US swing state in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Meanwhile I’m a political obsessive who is only just emerging from a long stretch of disenfranchisement.
I’m British but lost my vote there after I’d been away for 15 years. When Brexit removed my European citizenship, I also lost my vote in French local and European elections. Now, happily, double enfranchisement beckons. I recently became French, and, last week, picked up my brand-new ID card at a local town hall. Meanwhile, the UK is reinstating life-long voting for Britons abroad. I’ll never miss another election in either country again. Yet I’ll also never have my wife’s electoral clout. The US midterms emphasise an unfair truth: some votes are more powerful than others, and American swing voters rank top.
