Will my US absentee vote from Hong Kong count?
Some states will accept your ballot by email or fax. Some states will not, including Pennsylvania. You must mail it. At the end of October, traveling to mail my ballot at the US consulate was my simplest option — as of June 1, 2019 Speedpost and any other expedited mail service from Hong Kong to the USA required a customs declaration. The process left me wondering whose votes will count.
After a client meeting in Hong Kong’s Central district on Wednesday, October 21, I walked to the US Consulate on Garden Road in the neighboring district known as Admiralty.
The warm sun bounced off the mica grains of the sidewalk, lighting up the fortress unsubtly adorned with CONSULATE GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA across the front. “Almost done,” I thought.
I had spent the past two days meeting the criteria of a valid ballot:
1) I printed out new versions of the emailed ballot scaled to fit on A4 paper, the typical size available here (and Europe and many other places), as printing out the ballot originally formatted to 8.5 x 11-inch paper led to the barcode on the bottom being cut off. With the ballot downloaded as a jpeg image, I printed new versions until the resolution satisfied me.
2) The instructions said to place the ballot in “the secrecy envelope”. I didn’t receive a secrecy envelope by email. I placed it into a standard white envelope (HK size) and sealed it.
I went online to find the mailing address for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. I stumbled across the FAQ “I did not receive a secrecy envelope in my ballot package — what should I do?” I clicked on it.
“Voters who did not receive a secrecy envelope should NOT use a standard envelope to secure their ballot and have the following options:
1. Complete this form to have one mailed to your home.
2. Pick one up at a Secure Drop Box Location. Click here for a list of locations & their hours of operation.
3. Pick one up at any office location. Click here for a list of office locations & their hours of operation.”
I vetoed all these options and emailed Karley Sisler of Montgomery County Voter Services, the person who emailed me confirmation of my absentee ballot request in September. She wrote back shortly after her office opened:
“We do not send you a secrecy envelope. Please use a plain envelope.”
3) On the way to my client meeting prior to submitting my ballot, I realized that I hadn’t actually completed it and that I had brought only blue pens when the ballot must be completed with black ink to be valid.
“Your pen is black!” I said at the end of our meeting. “May I borrow it for a moment?”
Approaching the consulate on Wednesday, I believed this was the last step, I would be done in a few minutes. The ponytailed guard at the gate asked me — “Why are you here?” she said in choppy accented English.
“I want to mail my ballot,” I told her.
“Ok, may please I see your passport and ballot?” she asked.
I showed her my passport. “My ballot?” I said.
“Yes.”
Surmising that she needed to see proof of my purpose and not the ballot itself, I showed her the ballot confirmation form only.
“OK.” Satisfied. “Do you have any laptop or food or drink?” She pointed at a sign high on the gate, indicating six categories of items prohibited inside the consulate, including laptops, tablets, food or drink.
“I have a laptop,” I said.
“You cannot bring the laptop inside,” she said.
“Can I check it?” I asked.
She pointed to a white piece of paper encased in soft plastic framed in a red free-standing post at the corner of the street. “You can read the sign. You can go to Central Station to check your bag in a locker,” she said, pointing downhill “or maybe you can go to a sports center and check your bag in a locker” she pointed generally across the street.
Gazing at her, sunglasses to sunglasses, then gazing across the street, I then gazed downhill and walked away saying no words. I passed by the freestanding sign — yes, I could check out a locker at Central station for 50 HKD an hour.
I now know that these items are detailed on the consulate’s ‘Appointment System’ page, which I did not check as I did not need an appointment to submit my ballot.
Fortuitously, I’d scheduled a post-3:00 pm meet-up with a friend who works in a complex at the bottom of the Garden Road hill. It was now 2:20 pm. I loitered at a coffee shop.
“I’m near the consulate and I need your help,” I responded to his text informing me he’d freed up.
Returning to the consulate gates, I handed him my laptop and water bottle and thanked him in advance for loitering with my belongings.
The ponytailed guard passed me through the gate and up the sedimentary steps in the outdoor pre-entry caged foyer. I approached a pile of baskets, a foldable white-topped table, and two guards at the top of the steps who examined every item in my bag. The wallet came out, the woman opened it, checked the coin purse, and put that in one basket with my passport. My phone, keys, Kindle, and headphones went into a smaller basket. She took each pen out of the inner side pocket of my bag and clicked it out then in. Satisfied, she directed me to a table behind me.
I carried one basket inside the other and my bag to the smaller table, a resting place to free my hands for the body scan. The male guard waved the paddle wand respectfully inches from my body while a female guard looked on. ‘Beep’ went the wand. “Do you have a belt?” he asked.
I lifted my shirt to expose my beltless waistline.
“Anything in your pockets?” he asked.
My hands dove into the front then back pockets of my jeans and popped out empty-handed.
“Ok. Switch off your mobile phone before going inside,” he said. I held down the power button until the screen said its goodbyes. “This way please,” he shooed me along.
“I’m switching off my phone,” I said.
The male guard at the next table just outside the glass metal-framed entry set my baskets side-by-side and examined the contents again. He took a cursory look in my bag. “Your wristwatch,” he said. I held my wrist out. He gazed at the orange 10 USD digital watch I’d bought nights before my last overseas trip, then pointed to the basket with the phone.
“You want me to take it off?” I inquired.
He nodded. I took it off and he placed it in the basket with the phone and keys. “Take off your facemask before going inside and place it in the scanner.” He then directed me to enter the building through the glass door with a simple sheet metal frame and handle not fancier than the door to a neighborhood convenience store.
Stepping inside, I followed the instructions of the two male guards to place both baskets and the bag on the conveyer belt immediately on the right. I passed through the door frame style body scanner. When I met the baskets of my things, they placed a 8 x 3-inch plastic blue slab with the number 17 indented in white into the larger basket. A guard took the smaller basket — with phone, keys, Kindle, headphones, and wristwatch into a cubby hole known as 17.
Handing me the large basket and bag, they said “you can take this with you upstairs,” pointing to a narrow flight of carpeted stairs between dim white plain walls. I stepped through the door, began up the stairs, then shouted back in Cantonese “May I put my face mask back on before going up?”
“Yes, you can put your face mask back on,” one said, their tone friendly.
Alone in the calmest moment of my visit, I hung the blue cloth mask back on my face before marching up the stairs. At the top, white papers in free-standing signposts, much like the one at the earlier street corner, read “VISA SERVICES” with an arrow pointing right into a dim empty room with stacked chairs and “AMERICAN CITIZEN SERVICES” with an arrow pointing left into a sparsely populated sterilely lit carpeted room with teller windows facing the windows to the Hong Kong outside.
I watched a woman approach the first service window. “Hi, I’m handing in my ballot.” She slid her envelope through the hole at the bottom of the plexiglass and it disappeared.
I approached the same window. “Hi, I’d like to mail my ballot but I need an envelope.” The lady behind the plexiglass handed me a postage-paid envelope. Ready to fill it out at the neighboring vacant counter, I thought “…what’s the address?”. I had received it by email from Karley Sisler of Montgomery County Voter Services. The email was in my phone. My phone was off and in cubby hole 17 downstairs with the guards.
I waited in front of the vacant window. At the neighboring window, a 60-something-year-old man spoke English with an articulate Hong Kong accent wearing black dress pants, a white button-down shirt, and a satin-like black vest with a loosely adjusted snap belt on the back.
“Where should I mail my ballot to?” he asked.
“Where is it going?” said an American tenor voice from the other side of the plexiglass.
“California” answered the tuxedo-vested man.
“Ok, so in this book, you can find your district and the address of the voter services office for your county. So you can have a seat over there and flip through this and find the address you need and copy it onto the envelope. But bring that back when you’re done.”
“Ok,” said the tuxedo-vested man. “I also want to ask… I am an American Citizen, but my wife is not an American Citizen. Can I include her?”
“Your wife is not an American Citizen,” repeated the tenor, “can you include your wife in what?”
“I want to go to the US,” said the man in the tuxedo vest.
“And what do you mean by include her? You want your wife to go with you?”
I fidgeted as this conversation carried on, the American accented tenor answering all questions and comments generously. No timepiece and no means of communication on me. How long had my friend loitered?
The tuxedo-vested man left the counter and sat on a plastic seated metal-framed chair in the middle of the room.
I approached the counter he’d been at. No one sat on the other side of the plexiglass. “Hello?” I said.
After no response, I shuffled further down the line of six windows. Those beyond the first two had shades drawn. By now, three people formed a sparse line behind me. I shuffled back and forth between the first and second windows.
How long will my friend loiter? I thought.
I waved. Then I saw two buttons outside the plexiglass and a wire leading from them over the top and into the room behind the plexiglass. I pressed on one, unsure if it did anything as it didn’t move. The woman who handed me the envelope did return.
“Is it ready?” she asked, standing a foot away from her counter.
“I need help,” I said.
Without moving her body, her head tilted and her eyes smiled slightly and I felt slightly pitied. “What kind of help do you need?”
“I need the mailing address for my county.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. That gentleman has the book,” she said, nodding toward the seated tuxedo-vested man.
“You have only one?”
“We have only one. You’ll have to wait.”
“Ok, thank you.” I walked to the child-sized table by the tuxedo-vested man, pulled out a knee-high plastic child’s chair from under it, and sat next to him.
He noticed. “Hi,” I greeted him, my voice rising in pitch “when you’re done, I would like to borrow that book.”
“Sure,” he said, softly and friendly.
“Take your time. Thank you” I said, turning away to fill out the return address on the envelope at the kids’ table.
“Where are you from?” he asked me.
“I live here now,” I replied.
“I mean, where are you from in the US?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“Oh, nice state” he continued, facing down at the form he was filling.
“You think so?” I said, giving a sideways turn of the head without taking my eyes from my envelope.
“Yes,” he said. A moment of quiet between us.
“Is it easy to find a job?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Is it easy to find a job there?”
“In Pennsylvania?”
“Yes”
“I have no idea,” I declared. My lips smiled and my brow furrowed, desperate to write my return address correctly.
“I worked for the federal government,” he shared after a quiet moment.
“Mmm,” I said. I took inventory of my voting packet. Almost there, I thought, and let out a loud unvoiced lion’s breath sigh through my face mask.
Finishing the return address, I set down my pen and sat quietly until the tuxedo-vested man finished with the book and handed it to me.
“Thank you so much,” I said, receiving the gift of the book, soft and massive like phonebooks of the ’90s. I flopped the book over my lap and flipped frantically to Pennsylvania, then Montgomery County. My shoulders relaxed, relieved that the book’s address contained the fragments I remembered from the address in my emails.
I began to copy it onto my mailing envelope. “I used to … …. ….” The tuxedo-vested man spoke to me again while we were both writing.
“In California?” I asked, recalling his conversation with the tenor voice I’d overheard earlier.
“In Washington, DC,” he said. “I was at the Pentagon.”
“Ah.” I finished addressing my envelope.
A Caucasian male looking slightly younger than myself appeared beside me with open hands “Hi, may I use that?”
“Of course,” I passed him the book, my leg of the relay finished. I licked and sealed shut my postage‑paid package complete with my signed ballot declaration form and the sealed secrecy envelope containing the ballot.
I stood up more slowly than needed. “Good luck with everything,” I said to the tuxedo-vested man.
“Oh,” he looked up. “Ok. Bye” he relented.
I approached the counter, summoned the lady with the silent non-depressible button, and slid the envelope to her. I appreciatively waited for her to examine the address and then nod approval.
“Thank you so much.”
I bounced down the same dim carpeted staircase to the guards. I exchanged the blue number 17 slab for the smaller basket and was shuttled out another plane glass sheet metal-framed door into the sedimentary paved foyer.
The same guards who dissected my belongings gave zero attention as I spread out the baskets, inventoried and reconsolidated my belongings on the tiniest table I’d seen all day at the top of the seven stone steps that would chute me down onto the glaring sidewalk outside the gates.
I wondered, too shaky to check the time, “how long had my friend loitered?” and too shaky to ask, “will it count?”
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If you or someone you know is a US Citizen living abroad and wants to commiserate about the process of voting, feel free to drop me a line!
