ELI5 why do people in USA need to register to vote?
I'd expect the state to have a list of all its citizens and their basic personal info (age) which could be used to determine their eligibility for voting. In my country, we get a "invitation" to the vote, with your voter station and info on how to change it.
Instead, I'm seeing posts about USA's "voter rolls", which are sometimes purged, which prevents people from voting. Isn't this an attack on the voting system and democracy itself?
So why doesn't USA have a list of voters? Are they stupid?
Because voting regulations are left to the State governments, and each state government does it slightly differently, often with designs that are specifically intended to disenfranchise specific voters.
Further, because of the Electoral College, it is very important WHERE you vote. If I live in New York, I can't vote in Pennsylvania. I get lumped together with everyone in New York.
So my registration ties me to a "permanent address" that aligns with a state, their electoral college contribution, and the rules they've put in place to gather, validate, and verify the vote, all mixed with manipulation over the years to swing the vote wherever possible (see: gerrymandering)
And of course because it's done this way, it's easier for State governments to disenfranchise people that they don't want voting. Why yes it is a corrupt and broken system. Thank you for asking.
We do have "permanent address" here too and it is used to determine the voter station and district and thus the representative candidates you can vote.
Is the "permanent address" a thing just for the voting system, or is it used for other bureaucracy as well?
Governmental agencies typically dont share data like that so you would have to give them your address separately. Imo its partially a republican "hurr no big govt" and jim crow type deal where republicans want to keep poor people and colored people from voting (less likely to have the time to register or have a fixed address).
Independently. I don’t there is any connection, but yes I have a residence for determining where I vote and who for, my city lists my primary residence for property tax purposes (investment/rental property is taxed more) and excise tax, my state department of revenue lists my residence for income tax but they may coordinate with IRS which does the same. My drivers license has my residence address but I don’t know if they need to be the same nor does it need to be the same as my car’s location, etc
So if you’re on holiday in another state, let’s say… you can’t walk out of your hotel and vote? You have to be physically in your home state during election time to mark a ballot.
That’s where things get crazy since the local implementation is local.
My state makes it easy to register to vote: automatic when getting or renewing a drivers license or id. We have a reliable system, and many polling stations, and everyone gets a mailer for early/mail-in voting. For me voting has always been walk a couple blocks to my neighborhood elementary school and walk back, either before or after work. There’s never much of a line so it takes a couple minutes, and polls are open the maximum time so you can vote despite work.
Some of the stories coming from other states are as alien to me as they probably are to you. How could there be one drop off location for early votes for the entire city of Houston? How can some localities get away with so few machines and so few locations that there are lines? How can someone stay out of jail if they’re purging voter rolls just before an election or without due diligence? How is there even a big line in the hot sun such that someone can make a big deal of providing water to people trying to vote?
There is no central id system in the US. There are several things that are close to a national id, like social security numbers, but they are also explicitly not allowed to be used as an id. There's a very long history of US citizens opposing the creation of any sort of national registry.
States have id systems, but they still require a person to manually register for them. There's limited interaction between states, so it's possible to appear as a citizen of two states simultaneously, this is solved with eventual consistency and fraud charges for those who abuse it.
It's getting better in some states, where they can update your voting registration when you change your address. Voting rolls are managed at the city and township level where they generally don't have the resources to properly integrate data, which leads to outdated lists where a one bedroom apartment may have 10 different voters registered that lived there at one point. There's no great way of knowing who the legitimate voters are, and who should be purged as they are no longer eligible to vote there.
There is a need to do some cleaning of the voter rolls, as accurate ones make planning easier. Printing a ballot for each name is wasteful if you know 20% of the names aren't valid, but running out of ballots is unacceptable. Purging people who haven't voted in say 20 years can reduce the number of bad names, but it will almost definitely affect a few people that haven't moved and haven't voted in 20 years. The attack on democracy is more theoretical than practical, that a person is going to suddenly start voting after not doing it for so long.
Lot of dumb comments here. Everyone in a country with voting registers to vote, you just may not realize it. In order to vote in an election, the government needs to know that 1) you are a citizen, 2) you are alive, and 3) where you live so they know you can vote in that local district.
Ask yourself, if you moved across your country, how would you vote in those local elections? The answer is that you would register to vote there. You may not see it that way, cause that "registration" may be dual purposed with some other act (like getting a new drivers license), but you are letting the government know you can vote there. Most places in the US (at least everywhere I've lived, I think) allowed me to register to vote when I got my new ID.
The thing that makes it a little different in the US is that registering to vote isn't strictly tied to anything else. If you move from one city to another within the same state, or if you choose not to get a new drivers license in a new state, the government will have no clue where you live. You aren't required to give the government that information. The only time you have to give the government an address is to file taxes (maybe not even then). That doesn't occur until spring, so if you move in the summer, there's no way for the government to know that you can vote in a different place if you don't tell them.
if you moved across your country, how would you vote in those local elections?
I would literally just show up to the polls on election day and show a piece of ID and something (utility bill, etc) with my new address and tell them I want to vote. Or I would bring a friend and they would sign a statement affirming I'm who I say I am.
You may not see it that way, cause that "registration" may be dual purposed with some other act (like getting a new drivers license)
This is the problem, the list of citizens, and list of registered voters should not be two completely separate lists. You should be able to vote no matter what if you are a citizen
There is no "list of citizens", though. Well, there are things like social security, but they aren't tied to where you live the way that voting has to be.
I would literally just show up to the polls on election day and show a piece of ID and something (utility bill, etc) with my new address and tell them I want to vote.
This is broadly how it works here, it's just that most states don't want to do it same-day since that bogs down the lines on election day.
My point is that "registering to vote" just means proving that you can vote, and no matter where you live, you have to do that somehow.
you left out that registration is also a way to keep black and Hispanic people from voting by imposing "rules and requirements". been that way in the US for a LONG time unfortunately.
Not really. Where I'm from(Eastern Europe) as long as you're of legal age and have a valid ID, you can vote, you don't need to register anywhere.
Now, for local (mayor, city council, etc) and parliamentary elections you can vote only in the district to which you belong, as per the home address you have in your ID.
For presidential an European parliamentary elections, you can vote ANYWHERE.
So no one registers anywhere.
I’m not sure how that would work: is your vote tied to your identity?
Having a registration of all legal voters allows you to verify people only vote once, only legitimate votes are counted, and your vote can be anonymous.
No one knows who I voted for (except probably all of Lemmy, lmao), but on my way in I verified who I am, and they checked off that I was listed as a voter, and checked me off as having voted.
It sounds like you are from a country that requires you to have an ID. So effectively, you are required to register to vote by getting an ID. In the US, you are not required to have an ID, so the government has no way of knowing your home address by default.