According to Mayor Lydie Polfer, the municipality of Luxembourg City has sent out 803 convocations for the national election to Luxembourg citizens living abroad. Of those, 188 went to Brazil and 149 to the United States.
Why Luxembourg City? The capital has the role of managing mail-in ballots for Luxembourgers abroad who no longer have a registered address in the Grand Duchy. Tuesday marked the final deadline to request this type of mail-in ballot.
For people here in the country who want to vote by mail, the deadline is 13 September.
Various political parties have already focused on the overseas Luxembourgish community. For instance, the Pirate Party even fielded a candidate from Brazil in recent municipal elections. The Christian Social People’s Party (CSV) sent representatives, including Michel Wolter, Claude Wiseler, and Isabel Wiseler-Santos Lima, to the US and Brazil for outreach. However, the Democratic Party (DP) and The Left have not (yet) made such trips abroad.
Close to 800 mail-in ballots is not a lot considering that 133,500 eligible voters live abroad, up from 69,000 in 2018. In Brazil alone, the number of so-called ‘Neo Luxembourgers’ has risen to 26,000, which is almost identical to the rate in neighbouring Belgium.
While foreigners living and working in the Grand Duchy are not allowed to vote in the national election if they do not hold citizenship, people living abroad who can prove that they have Luxembourgish ancestors can exercise their right to vote. However, they need to have regained citizenship, hold a valid passport, and have registered for the election.
The fact that, same as in 2018, only few Neo Luxembourgers have applied for mail-in ballots might point to the complicated administrative procedures. Daniel Atz, a Luxembourger living in Omaha, Nebraska, is the head of the organisation ‘LuxCitizenship’, which carried out a poll targeting Luxembourgers in the Americas.
11% of Brazilian Luxembourgers want to vote. Only 8% of those living in the US registered for mail-in ballots.
However, Atz, who became a Luxembourg national in 2014, underlined that more Luxembourgers want to vote and that sometimes problems occur along the way: “The first time I tried voting here in the US, my ballot was sent via TNT, who don’t have an extensive network here in the US or in Brazil. ... I ended up getting my letter the day before the actual vote, so it was impossible to send my ballot from the US back to Luxembourg in time.”
According to the way in which the government interprets election legislation, voters must have a valid passport, which poses additional problems according to Atz: “People with a citizenship certificate still need to wait between six and nine months to request a Luxembourgish passport at the embassies in Washington or Brasília.” He further underlined that the actual 2003 election law does not stipulate that voters must have a passport.
Although the Luxembourgers in Atz’ network dislike the government’s interpretation of the election law, nobody has thus far attempted to challenge it. As for their desire to vote in a country where they do not actually live, Atz argues that this has to do with the fact that citizenship makes them feel compelled to participate in the country’s civic processes.
