Edit/Update: It turns out that my last name has a capitol letter in the middle and they put a space in it. Thank god. I can actually vote this year.
Edit/Update: It turns out that my last name has a capitol letter in the middle and they put a space in it. Thank god. I can actually vote this year.
As a European, the whole registering to vote thing is honestly one of the wildest parts of the US elections to me. It’s so unnecessary complicated and prone to errors/manipulation. I just have to show up with my ID, doesn’t matter if it’s for the EU parliament or the local city senate.
the sound bites you hear about voting are intentionally misleading: you have to show up with an id to vote here too and that’s not where to controversy lies; but the soundbites are setup to make it sound like it is to engender the reaction you’ve shared.
the controversy is registering to vote; not voting; and the conservative states intentionally make registering as heavily bureaucratic as possible in the hopes of minimizing the number of people who can successfully finish to process of registration.
they’ve also dedicated hundreds of millions on dollars to understand and enact policies to keep the poor and minority groups from voting.
usually democrats sit back and let republicans openly do it, but sometimes democrats do it themselves; the democratic governor of california just made automatic voter registration illegal; just as the conservative states do.
So… I’m in Texas , been here a long time.
most ballot counts in the primaries and general are counted by secret software and hardware run by ultra conservative families the last 20 plus years. Recounts are not allowed and exit polls not used anymore because of unpredictability.
Nobody cares, no political party wants to change : not a topic in forums anywhere, even in conspiracy minded chat rooms, and it’s been this way forever ( since before 2000).
There is a ton of crazy that is ignored .
I’ve seen how the system works, I’ve been at the county chair level. Nobody will criticize it . There is a quiet culture of people knowing it’s invalid but decide to leave it be.
Depends on the country though. In France you must be registered to vote (you’re assigned a specific voting office). It’s a single registration foe everything, not for each vote
Although the process is online, and takes like 5mins.
You also get a voting card, but it’s technically optional, it just speeds up the process in the voting office.
Just want to add, in the US you’d don’t have to register to vote each election/vote, just when you change address.
It’s by design. We could make it easier, but certain groups benefit from making it difficult.
In conclusion, please send the UN to fix us
On the one hand, the UN making a resolution that they won’t trust the results of the US elections would play right into the hands of what some MAGAs are saying.
But MAGAs then agreeing to any UN resolution, especially one that requires third party oversight…
I’d say the odds are even on this.
There’s never been a United States ID card, for… reasons. As a Californian, I could get a California ID card, at the same place I got my California Driver’s License, if I didn’t intend to drive. The forms have the option of adding Voter Registration using the same information (birth certificate, proof of residence) at the same time. But some states make it all much more complicated.
…what the electorate consider a bug the politicians consider a feature…
Yeah but we have voter id. And for some reason Americans think it is unreasonable to have to have a government issued ID as this would disenfranchise all the people that don’t have an ID… Which I think is also weird. Just make IDs accessible to citizens at low costs and implement voterID across the board.
They could just make a government ID that is not mandatory. Much like a passport. And whoever holds a passport or a voluntary govt ID is automatically enabled to vote using their ID / passport, but then would still leave the choice of manually registering for voting for those who don’t trust “the government” and don’t want a govt ID
Why? The whole “illegals are voting” will be dead in the water. And requiring someone to be able to ID themselves using a government issued and official ID when performing stuff like voting is not weird. The whole convoluted show up with birth certificate yadda yadda is.
Yeah that’s pretty much what I meant, sorry if I wasn’t clear.
I just think in order to reduce the resistance against such a change, it might be good to still provide the “old” method with voter registration for anyone who doesn’t want a government ID because of “muh freedoms”.
That way, any normal citizen can just have a government ID and by identifying themselves be able to vote without further registration. Any citizen who doesn’t want an ID can go through a voter registration process, same as today.
A certain political party benefits from low voter turnout. Which, coincidentally, also happens to be the party working to get Trump elected and shield him from the repercussions of his crimes.
Yeah. It’s also not as if doing this now will be reasonable. It will be something that needs to be put into law including the affordable national ID and then worked towards over the course of a decade or something.
Imagine you moved countries, and were entitled to vote in both.
You have to tell the new country you exist there.
That’s the most common failure mode in the US, when you move states or even counties and there’s a miscommunication or lack of communication between where you came from and where you are. There is no top level federal voter database.
There are other issues, but this is the most common.
You don’t vote at a federal level, you vote at a state level, for federal stuff. (And state/local stuff)
Are there people of voting age that are exempt from paying taxes? Because I’m pretty sure the federal government has a huge database of its citizens already through the IRS. People who became adults after the last tax season and people committing tax fraud would need to register manually once, but I don’t think that’s such a big risk.
As I said, federal government doesn’t handle this. So the IRS is involved for several reasons.
I think for most people in the US when you move you have to get a new driver’s license, and that process also lets you register to vote as an automatic bonus if you check a box saying you want it
Some states have lifetime DL terms, while others are still ridiculously long.
That’s true but I’m just explaining the potential problem.
It’s overblown. It’s mostly propaganda.
My ID is good for 5 years, and I am required to update it within 60 days of changing residences. Every time I’ve renewed or updated it, they have asked me if I wanted to register or update my voter registration. My registration is updated every time I vote, and I don’t get de-registered unless I skip voting for about a decade straight, without re-registering when I renew my ID card.
ALL of the problems with voter registration are about people who either can’t or won’t get or renew their ID card. Every time you read about voter registration issues in the US, you should imagine going to your polling station without a current ID card.
“I’ve had no issues, therefore issues don’t exist”
What I’m describing has been federal law for over 30 years. The European criticism about ID cards is nonsensical. Every time you obtain, renew, or amend your drivers license or ID, you update your voter registration.
Remember the context of my comment: I am replying to European criticism of registration. The European approach is for everyone to obtain a government issued ID card and present it at the polling station. The NVRA already does this. We have already adopted the European solution to this problem.