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American Voter Registration In Nicaragua

By Pat Werner

As time rolls forward in 2018 it is time to register to vote.  And even though an American is in Nicaragua, he or she can still vote in   elections, including primaries and general elections,  in their state or territory  of last residence.  To help this out I began in 2016 working on voter registration, and am working now for the 2018 elections.  The process is not very complicated, but not what some expect.  Since the  Presidency of Jimmy Carter, the law has provided that Americans can  vote overseas.  It is similar to, but not the same as, absentee voting.  The idea of Congress is to make overseas voting as easy as possible.

The way it works is that at the beginning you have to notify the place of your last voting of your intent to vote in this year´s elections. Even if you are an American citizen and have never voted in an American election, in most instances you can still vote by submitting a request for register to vote.   If you have already voted in the past, you send into the precinct of your last voting a small postcard like document called the Voter Registration And Absentee Ballot Request (called the Federal  Post Card Application or FPCA).  If you are not sure of the exact address of the local precinct where you voted, you can find it on the web page of the Federal Voter Assistance Project, under local officials.  You should send them a notice every year.  If you do not have the FPCA you can download it and print out a copy.

Any American citizen who will be 18 years of age  on election day, 2018, can vote, as long as that person is not disabled from voting.  Obviously you cannot register to vote in more than one place at the same time  nor vote more than once in the same election.  The process to fill out the FPCA takes about 15 minutes.  Once filled out, it can be mailed in the United States free of charge; and the US Embassy will also send it up free.  You can also mail it by Nicaraguan mail, or a mail forwarding service like Nicabox.  One advantage of the FPCA is that you can request to receive your ballot by email and can vote by email.  If you have double citizenship, you can still vote, as long  as neither of the countries prohibits voting in this manner.

To start off the year, I set up the first voter registration session,  drove to San Juan del Sur, and stayed at  Rosita´s Hotel, courtesy of Rosita and Manager John Safford.  That is where I held the first meeting. Clare Creegan from Managua joined me there.   I went through the filling out process with the folks that came to the session.  I had sufficient FPCAs with me so that we filled them out, got them signed, and prepared them to send off.  We also found the addresses of all the precincts where the request must go, and so addressed the FPCA to be sent there.  It was a pleasant morning. The preprinted FPCAs have a sticky edge so they can be folded and stuck together.

Next voter registration session will be in Granada, March 16, 2-5 pm at the Hotel Casa San Francisco, kitty corner from the San Francisco Convent.  A session in Managua is being planned, and we hope to get as many Americans registered to vote as possible. And we are planning a couple of other activities to keep the expat community entertained.  In the meantime, I have the FPCAs at home here in Diriamba and will be happy to register Americans to vote, with some prior notification to make sure I am home. If there are organizations out there that employ Americans, please advise and I will try to visit and set up a voter registration session.

 

Pat Werner    [email protected]

 

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