Thread

Unknown number of Texas voter registrations went unprocessed due to DPS error

106 points · 195 comments · hn_acker

agos · 1790263045 · focus · HN ↗
the entire concept of "voter registration" (and associated shenanigans) is so alien to my European brain that I fail to see any reason why the richest country in the world does things this way other than voter suppression. What am I missing?
1. ironman1478 · 1790263173 · focus · HN ↗
  You're not missing anything.
2. the_doctah · 1790263179 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
  1. mobelkh · 1790263263 · focus · HN ↗
    why can't you do the process when you vote?
    rootusrootus · 1790264494 · focus · HN ↗
    In about half of the States you can.
  2. dividedcomet · 1790263291 · focus · HN ↗
    Which doesn’t happen all that often and the government is probably aware of who is a citizen and who isn’t.
    lrasinen · 1790263840 · focus · HN ↗
    The US doesn't have a population register in the same way as European countries do.
    For reference, the Finnish voting experience is such that about a month before the election you get a card to your registered address, telling what the election is and what's your polling place. Then you show up on the day in question, show an ID, they check that against their list and off you go.
  3. undersuit · 1790263323 · focus · HN ↗
    Why should non-citizens be excluded from voting? If the community they live in makes a democratic decision they should be included.
    soupbowl · 1790263814 · focus · HN ↗
    Simply because it's ripe for abuse. I would never expected to vote as a non permanent resident, any place I live.
    undersuit · 1790265836 · focus · HN ↗
    I think otherwise. Let's put it to a vote. Hope you're a citizen.
    nullsanity · 1790264174 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    the_doctah · 1790265731 · focus · HN ↗
    Because of United States law.
    undersuit · 1790267439 · focus · HN ↗
    The iron-clad unchanging US law. Is it against the law for a city to let non-citizens vote on city proposals?
    the_doctah · 1790279627 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    ceejayoz · 1790280006 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a dodge; they said "non-citizens", not "illegal aliens".
    ceejayoz · 1790271779 · focus · HN ↗
    Only since 1996, and even then only Federally.
    <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/611" rel="nofollow">https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/611
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Immigration_Reform_and_Immigrant_Responsibility_Act_of_1996" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Immigration_Reform_and...
    Maybe we can ask SCOTUS to overthrow it on the "history and tradition" test Dobbs & Bruen recently (ironically) created.
    throwawayfifo · 1790292360 · focus · HN ↗
    >Only since 1996, and even then only Federally.
    States have banned noncitizen voting for statewide elections for a century.
    "While federal law does not prohibit noncitizens from voting in state or local elections, no state has allowed noncitizens to vote in statewide elections since Arkansas became the last state to outlaw noncitizen voting in state elections in 1926."
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizen_suffrage_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizen_suffrage_in_the_Un...
    ceejayoz · 1790293243 · focus · HN ↗
    Yep, they can do that.
    Nothing says the 1996 law can't be undone (as it's not an amendment), and states can permit noncitizen voting outside of the Federal context if they feel like it. That's Federalism for you.
    irishcoffee · 1790265834 · focus · HN ↗
    That system is ripe for abuse. The presidential election is usually (not always) decided by a few swing-states. It sure wouldn't be hard to fly a bunch of people in for a few days, put them up in hotels and feed them, give 'em a little bit of cash, so they go vote, as one example. So now you have to prove they live in, as you said, a community.
    If you had said 'immigrants' instead of non-citizens you would have a stronger point. I don't have an issue with non-citizen immigrants voting. Part of the challenge is a.) proving someone exists and b.) proving they live in the district in which they voted. How do you solve this? Voter registration.
    Ignoring all that, voting is both a right and privilege of citizenship. This can be revoked. As an example, convicted felons cannot vote.
    The 15th Amendment says (note the word citizens):
    > The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
    The 19th Amendment then gave women the right to vote:
    > The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
    So, it is very much a law to be a citizen in order to vote.
    As an aside, what if a non-citizen of an EU country was vacationing for a month in said EU country. Should they be able to vote? Of course not.
    undersuit · 1790267317 · focus · HN ↗
    > It sure wouldn't be hard to fly a bunch of people in for a few days
    I didn't say no registration. Every US state has a residency requirement before you can register to vote. Get out of here with your disingenious hyperbolics.
    >So, it is very much a law to be a citizen in order to vote.
    Oh no I'm proposing changing the law, your quotes say nothing about limiting a non-citizen's ability to vote. I never argued about a right to vote for non-citizens. I took a very limited stance.
  4. gyesxnuibh · 1790263329 · focus · HN ↗
    [flagged]
    yieldcrv · 1790264053 · focus · HN ↗
    one party says its rampant and cant prove it, they think the other party relies on non-citizens voting
    the other party says its not rampant per say and resists all capability to prove it, because they think the solutions to proving legal voter status would be difficult for their citizen voters to accomplish
    amusingly, the limited audits done always find improper votes for the first party, although nothing rampant
    ironically, Commonwealth and European countries all have the voter status proving requirement that the first party is asking for, despite this being seen as an extremist right wing idea to be distanced from
    in the US, it is accurate that any voter registration tweak has been used to decline legal voters ability to vote so the left - despite being more congruent ideals with the rest of the developed world - does have unique considerations and skepticism
    did I miss anything?
    someonebaggy · 1790264470 · focus · HN ↗
    The Commonwealth and European countries make it easy to prove voting eligibility though. That's why it's not a crazy idea there. In the US every single time it's tried there end up being crazy manipulative requirements. E.g. gun permit (no photo) being a valid voter ID but student ID (with photo) not, because they want gun owners to vote more (as they vote republican) and students less (as they vote democrat), and of course there's no universal ID card like in European countries.
    deathanatos · 1790265196 · focus · HN ↗
    > and resists all capability to prove it
    No, studies have been done, and routinely show that non-citizen voting in election accounts for a pittance of the vote (e.g., "A study of 2016 data by Brennan Center for Justice from 42 jurisdictions found an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million votes cast (or .0001% of votes)"); historical data of prosecution of non-citizen voters agrees with the studies, similarly showing it to be non-issue.
    There is evidence, the "one party" routinely presents it. This isn't some "both sides" issue.
    > the other party […thinks] the solutions to proving legal voter status would be difficult for their citizen voters to accomplish
    Yes, because they would. The GOP's proposed "SAVE Act", which was pushed directly by Trump, for example, would have (effectively) required most citizens to present passports as proof of citizenship. (And further, to obtain a passport, since most Americans do not have one.) (Among other problems with the bill.)
    (And just to note, since there is some non-US in the thread: you have to be a citizen to register to vote, and — though this is handled on a state by state basis, but I do not think any state deviates here — you must prove that already at registration. The ongoing debate above simply makes that harder to do.)
    nobody9999 · 1790305805 · focus · HN ↗
    >No, studies have been done, and routinely show that non-citizen voting in election accounts for a pittance of the vote (e.g., "A study of 2016 data by Brennan Center for Justice from 42 jurisdictions found an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million votes cast (or .0001% of votes)"); historical data of prosecution of non-citizen voters agrees with the studies, similarly showing it to be non-issue.
    Forget about the Brennan Center's single year audit. The Heritage Foundation's Election Fraud Database[0] goes back 40+ years to 1982.
    In those 40+ years, they have documented less than 2,000 cases of voter fraud, with more than 1,500,000,000 votes being cast within that time frame.
    That's a voter fraud rate of 0.0001333%. And even if we (without evidence), claim that the amount of fraud is 10x (0.001333%) or even 100x (0.01333%)higher and just not detected, despite the presence of observers from all involved parties at all the polls/counting stations in all of the 3500+ separate elections[1] that take place in the US yearly.
    The rate of fraudulent votes isn't high enough to impact the outcome of elections, even if we say that there's 100x more voter fraud than the folks who scream voter fraud is everywhere!!! have detected.
    It's a complete non-issue that's used by cynical folks to make it harder for their political opponents to vote. Which is disgusting, IMNSHO.
    [0] <a href="https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search?case_type=All" rel="nofollow">https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search?case_type=All
    [1] Elections are managed at the county level (of which there are 3500+ in the US), although processes and procedures are often dictated by state governments.
    tmpz22 · 1790265423 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you’re discounting how much historical and cultural imperatives influence the electoral zeitgeist.
    Like Germany being touchy tracking religious affiliations post WWII, post civil-war America is touchy about voter supression - im specifically referencing post civil war voter suppression conducted in what was then a Democrat stronghold in the American South.
    Many argue that shame has never gone away and is still being conducted today through modern tactics.
    Many would argue such a shame should never be dismissed at all.
    yieldcrv · 1790265748 · focus · HN ↗
    I didn’t discount that at all
    > it is accurate that any voter registration tweak has been used to decline legal voters ability to vote
    tmpz22 · 1790267992 · focus · HN ↗
    Acknowledging voter suppression exists is an understated way to communicate the severity of cultural shock events that transform entire societies.
    yieldcrv · 1790269912 · focus · HN ↗
    did I miss anything?
    so consensus is, no. you just didn’t like the way I wrote it
    ceejayoz · 1790265702 · focus · HN ↗
    > resists all capability to prove it
    No, they're satisfied with the existing proof. Which is pretty concrete.
    pbkompasz · 1790264330 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, it's next to the 90 deals in 90 days, lower prices and no new wars.
    the_doctah · 1790266123 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm confused by your flippancy, are you suggesting it doesn't happen?
  5. madeofpalk · 1790263490 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you think other countries don't have 'non-citizens'?
  6. phplovesong · 1790263695 · focus · HN ↗
    Thats not how it works. You usually have a few places you can vote in, and there is a list of names that are checked, then you vote.
    Its not like immigrant X from country Y can vote willy nilly.
    This is not rocked science. Every citizen is automatically allowed to vote, and IF you cant vote where you are supposed to you can handle this case specially.
  7. crote · 1790263887 · focus · HN ↗
    Surely the government already knows who is a citizen (otherwise it would not be able to stop noncitizens from registering), so surely it would be trivial for the government to use this list of citizens to send out ballots?
    Citizen baby is born? Add them to the list of citizens. Citizen dies? Remove them from the list of citizens. Citizen moves? Have them inform their new municipality about their change of address - which they'll probably need to do anyways for tax and mail reasons.
    rootusrootus · 1790264368 · focus · HN ↗
    > Citizen moves? Have them inform their new municipality about their change of address
    That is exactly what voter registration is?
    crote · 1790264949 · focus · HN ↗
    Not really. In my country there's no need to do an initial registration, and there isn't any kind of "voter roll purging" or having to redo it every few years to make sure it is constant. It basically Just Works without ever having to think about it.
    Letting the government know that you moved is primarily about them knowing where to send letters, and which types of municipality taxes to charge you. As a side-effect they'll also inform a few other parties like banks and insurance companies, and the voter roll update is just another one of those things which happens automatically. Nobody thinks about it like a "voter registration", the whole concept doesn't even exist.
    rootusrootus · 1790267008 · focus · HN ↗
    Really does not sound dissimilar, though I do have to refer back to an earlier comment I made that this is entirely run by the States and so not everyone has the same experience that I do. The only notification I give to the government when I move is to update the address on my driver's license. This also updates my voter registration, and the city & county seem to get their information from the state databases anyway so I don't tell them anything at all.
    spiralpolitik · 1790264399 · focus · HN ↗
    It does. However the party of small government doesn't believe in SQL joins between tables so kicks the problem down the states. ;)
    zbentley · 1790265234 · focus · HN ↗
    I know this was mostly glib, but it really doesn't work that way. There aren't centralized data repositories that even can be joined, in many cases. Even when they could be (by batch/paper-form request/extremely slow system integration) joined conceptually, many decades of inertia, law, regulation, and political opposition often prevent those interconnections from existing. Even when they are permitted to exist, they're usually implemented in extremely broken ways.
    And plenty of that headwind is not coming from the "party of small government"! The refrain of "the government should not have centralized data it can use to infringe on my rights" often transcends party, depending on what issue is at hand. That's sometimes a reasonable position to hold, but it definitely has a cost, especially when taken to extremes, or when make-citizen-services-work-better initiatives are framed as spying or whatnot.
    jtbayly · 1790264752 · focus · HN ↗
    Wait until you hear about all the dead people receiving benefits.
    But seriously, your assumptions about how the USA works are just wrong. Voting is not handled at the federal level. Citizenship is.
    crote · 1790265080 · focus · HN ↗
    I know, I was making fun of it. It's a "'no way to solve this', says only country which hasn't solved it yet" kind of problem which exists solely due to American exceptionalism.
    zbentley · 1790264968 · focus · HN ↗
    > Surely the government already knows who is a citizen
    No. There's a lot more nuance there than you'd think, in the "broken regulatory and technical processes" domain, not political issues.
    Example questions with unsatisfactory (not "impossible to do well", just "broken due to decades of technical and regulatory debt") answers: what government agencies, plural, are the authority of who is a citizen? Do they all agree? Do they provide ways for different agencies to check identities against their registries? If so, how do they match information in a citizenship-check request against their internal systems? By name? If so, how do they handle different name spellings (marriages, name changes, present/omitted middle names, non-ASCII)? By some other identifier? If so, how do they validate uniqueness of that identifier (SSNs are not secure/are widely leaked for tens of millions of people, addresses change and can have multiple residents, not everyone has a passport number, state-issued IDs/drivers licenses aren't stored centrally by the federal government)? If a check-requested identifier is invalid, can they tell whoever requested the check why it's invalid? Do these validation requests happen in real time/one at a time, or periodically in batches? Do the people sending the validation requests have any contact at all with the people providing information about why unsuccessful requests failed?
    I've worked on these systems--human and technical. It's hard even for a functioning, outcome-focused, centralized government. In this problem domain, the US federal government is none of those things, and has not been for many decades (or ever, in some areas).
    Sure, some of the issues are politically-caused (one party has an incentive to not fix problems that privilege their agenda), but most of them are accumulated failures with no malicious agenda as the cause.
3. smorrebrod · 1790263397 · focus · HN ↗
  > so alien to my European brain
  Voter registration is mandatory in France.
  1. pjc50 · 1790264559 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not mandatory in the UK, but it's pretty frictionless. The only downside is that the data is sold commercially.
    Conservatives attempted to copy the US voter ID requirements, but without realizing that the underlying demographic distribution of ID is different, and besides you can just postal vote anyway.
  2. agos · 1790350119 · focus · HN ↗
    do people regularly get purged from voting registries in France?
4. oilkillsbirds · 1790263596 · focus · HN ↗
  You think there’s no voter fraud in Europe?
  1. ballsac · 1790263755 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  2. thinkingtoilet · 1790263806 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes. Just like there is basically zero fraud in America. This isn't a problem. It is only for the dumbest people who believe Trump that 'millions of illegal immigrants voted' yet they haven't produced a single bit of evidence to prove it, but I'm sure it's real.
    decremental · 1790264111 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    someonebaggy · 1790264344 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    ibejoeb · 1790265775 · focus · HN ↗
    For context:
    Illegal immigrant voted: <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/colombian-national-pleads-guilty-charges-related-adopting-identity-us-citizen-obtain" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/colombian-national-plea...
    6,600 noncitizens registered, 400 noncitizens voted, undisclosed how many, if any, are unlawfully in country: <a href="https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2026/6600-noncitizens-registered-to-vote-after-error-in-new-jersey-motor-vehicle-system-governor-says/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2026/6600-nonci...
    crote · 1790267109 · focus · HN ↗
    To be fair, as was seen with Bush v. Gore a very small number of votes can change the entire political landscape. Something probably ought to be done about that as well.
    sethammons · 1790271058 · focus · HN ↗
    from that source: a dmv program errored and registered some people to vote. So the government itself made the error. Out of 4 million voters in NJ, 400 ineligible people voted. And were caught. Oregon found 30 ineliglbe voters cast ballots. And were caught. Colorado, none were allowed to vote. In CA, 1.5k incorrectly registered voters _may_ have voted, and of those, _some_ might not have been US citizens.
    This is the strongest evidence the nation can turn up on voter fraud. It sure looks to me that the system is catching the absolutely minuscule amount of non-voters voting and that voter fraud is mostly a non-issue.
    It appears the more common voter fraud is a US citizen voting in elections outside their home residence. Like Ken Paxton, running for senate in TX, who it appears voted numerous times using his ex-wife's address, including to vote for himself.
    <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/07/ken-paxton-voting-election-law/" rel="nofollow">https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/07/ken-paxton-voting-el...
    zahlman · 1790312727 · focus · HN ↗
    It's bizarre to me that putting numbers on something with high quality citations gets downvoted like this.
    thinkingtoilet · 1790366022 · focus · HN ↗
    And how many votes were cast? Did it impact the election in any way? It's a non-issue and we should be happy about that.
    ibejoeb · 1790368157 · focus · HN ↗
    That's all in the cited sources. I didn't offer an opinion. I added contextual information related directly to your positions.
    thinkingtoilet · 1790378420 · focus · HN ↗
    You deliberately left out facts to support your bias. 4,000,000 votes case. So 0.01%. If the election was that close a recount would be done anyway. It does not effect anything at all because our system is already solid and that's a good thing. There is no crisis. There are no major issues in this area. There are major issues with Texas closing down polling places in black neighborhoods but lets all pretend it's illegal voting.
    ibejoeb · 1790379767 · focus · HN ↗
    I posted 2 sources. I did not post a comment. Take it up with the authors.
    someonebaggy · 1790274798 · focus · HN ↗
    I explained this in a sibling comment to this one, but it's +4 points [flagged] because someone didn't like the explanation.
    zahlman · 1790312672 · focus · HN ↗
    No, it was flagged because you said something untrue and unkind about your political outgroup. In fact, it is not just untrue, but something that said outgroup constantly clarifies to the point where the meme ("but they have to come legally") is a rallying cry. And to the point where many of their strongest voices are legal first or second generation immigrants.
    zahlman · 1790313584 · focus · HN ↗
    I can literally prompt ChatGPT with
    > What examples of American voter fraud (real or alleged) have been promoted in right-wing media within the last 28 days?
    and find multiple results with considerable detail. If you want to hear anecdotes from ordinary people who've witnessed it (or at least had good reason for suspicion), it's not hard to find the right circles for that, either. But by its nature, few have access to the information that would be needed to evidence it properly.
    More importantly, though, there are plenty of people who can point at how insecure the system is and how cheap and easy it would (or should) be to fix that. It's hard to understand how there can be such strenuous objection to fixing it if there is actually no problem. It's hard to understand how there can be so many people who are definitely following the law, but would face a hardship if expected to prove it even minimally.
    Canadians must identify themselves in federal elections (<a href="https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e" rel="nofollow">https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do...) and normally register in advance (<a href="https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=reg&document=index&lang=e" rel="nofollow">https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=reg&do...) which is usually as simple as ticking a checkbox to give consent for the CRA (equivalent to IRS) to pass on your data to Elections Canada (which is independent of the government). None of this is even slightly controversial here; even our most left-wing parties (and the centre of gravity of our entire system is generally considered to be well to the left of the US's) are not trying to eliminate the requirement.
    thunderfork · 1790316921 · focus · HN ↗
    The Canadian comparison is apples to oranges when you look at and compare the ease of identification and registration (can register at the polls; a massive number of verification methods - vs - sometimes can't, very few verification methods)
    thinkingtoilet · 1790365978 · focus · HN ↗
    So we have 'anecdotes' from chat gpt. Totally valid.
    zahlman · 1790374108 · focus · HN ↗
    Did you know that when you use ChatGPT for research, it gives you links for its citations automatically which you can then verify? I did this.
  3. nullsanity · 1790264025 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  4. crote · 1790264275 · focus · HN ↗
    Correct. In my country anyone is able to audit the process, and the only case of fraud was an instance of "granny farming" for local municipality elections - which after a full redo resulted in... exactly the same outcome.
    Stopping voter fraud really isn't that difficult. Just don't over-complicate it with silly things like electronic voting machines or mass mail-in voting and there's not a lot that can go wrong.
    reverius42 · 1790376539 · focus · HN ↗
    With paper ballots or even an auditable paper trail from electronic voting machines, it's basically impossible to commit large-scale voter fraud, and every audit that I'm aware of in recent first-world elections has shown voter fraud to be a tiny number of votes at most.
    We should be very, very wary of non-auditable electronic voting though.
  5. agos · 1790349565 · focus · HN ↗
    voter fraud around here is mostly people buying votes, not so much having people registered who didn't have the requirements
5. krapp · 1790263625 · focus · HN ↗
  You aren't missing anything, it's almost all about voter suppression, and a lot of that is about racism.
  And it isn't even a secret. You can find quotes where politicians talk openly about it. I'm trying to be neutral here but when I say "politicians" I mean within one party.
  <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/when-politicians-tell-truth-voting-restrictions" rel="nofollow">https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/when...
  <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/inside-house-republicans-plan-end-run-dem-opposition-pass-trump-backed-voter-id" rel="nofollow">https://www.foxnews.com/politics/inside-house-republicans-pl...
  <a href="https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/historyvotersuppression/websitesandresources" rel="nofollow">https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/historyvotersuppression/web...
  1. zahlman · 1790266748 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    zahlman · 1790311327 · focus · HN ↗
    I see that at least two people saw fit to downvote the above without comment.
    I cannot fathom a legitimate reason why. Perhaps someone might care to, for example, quote the part of the article I overlooked, in which Republicans are supposedly openly discussing their supposed racist motivations for desiring "a proof of citizenship mandate for the voter registration process, and a nationwide photo ID rule to cast a ballot"? Or provide real evidence that the SAVE act would actually disenfranchise people who actually do have a legal right to vote? Or perhaps an argument for why the franchise should be extended to people whose presence within the American borders is already a violation of federal law?
  2. zahlman · 1790374284 · focus · HN ↗
    Since my previous iteration of the comment was completely illegitimately flagged, here it is again:
    > I read your Fox News article. It does not even remotely establish anything like "talking openly" about "racism". In fact, it explicitly portrays the "politicians" in question advocating for "a proof of citizenship mandate for the voter registration process, and a nationwide photo ID rule to cast a ballot", and describing these as "really commonsense provisions", which they would be in countries that didn't form as an amalgamation of existing states (provinces, cantons, whatever you want to call them). All the arguments I've heard against this bill have been absurd, for example a canard about women supposedly not being able to prove their (entirely optional) name change when they get married.
    This is a completely reasonable argument to make and it is completely unreasonable to try to suppress it, even if you disagree. If you believe there is something in the Fox News article that supports your claim, feel free to quote it. If "you can find" these quotes, show me some. Like, from within the last few years, not from the Goldwater era, please.
6. ecshafer · 1790263637 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
  1. ballsac · 1790264213 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  2. [deleted] · 1790264493 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  3. crote · 1790265833 · focus · HN ↗
    See, and here I thought that a democracy meant that everyone would get a vote!
    So who gets to determine what counts as "some effort"? Is putting voter registration behind a Rube Goldberg machine enough, or should we go for an IQ test? How about sitting in a room for 72 consecutive hours before being able to cast your vote? Should we perhaps "grandfather in" people who have already proven to be trustworthy as well?
    Voting is a fundamental human right. If politicians can make rules deciding who gets to vote, then those politicians will disenfranchise people voting for their opponents. The only solution is to make sure everyone can vote - including the "undesirables" like dumb people and prisoners.
    Obvious example: you spelled "ought" wrong, this means that according to my arbitrary rules passed by a democratically-elected government you are not smart enough to vote. And no, you can't change the rules: you'd first have to elect a different government, which you can't do because you can't vote.
    ecshafer · 1790268351 · focus · HN ↗
    The federalist papers make it pretty clear the intention was not that everyone should vote. The idea of active citizens being the ones who vote is everywhere in Republicanism, whether you look at the early French Republic and their restrictions on the national guard, to constitutionalism in England, or the early American Republic. In Athens, not everyone got a vote. In Rome not everyone got a vote. In cities across Europe following the Magdeburg charter, not everyone got a vote. The original limitation of propertied people in the constitution was the correct move in hindsight. The issue with suffrage for those that are not active and giving a positive impact to the country is exactly what you see happening today, politicians pandering to certain voter groups with hand outs instead of sticking to principles.
    ceejayoz · 1790270505 · focus · HN ↗
    > The federalist papers make it pretty clear the intention was not that everyone should vote.
    If we're citing that sort of thing, I'm gonna go ahead and quote the Declaration of Independence, which should be at least as instructive as to intent.
    The Federalist Papers are, after all, advocacy efforts (opeds, even) by three people, not policy decisions agreed upon and ratified by the states.
    "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
    "All men" and "the governed" seem like they could easily have said "landowners" if that were genuinely the intent.
    (Nor should we necessarily be permanently bound to the opinions of people who predate germ theory.)
7. wat10000 · 1790263695 · focus · HN ↗
  Do you live in one of the European countries that has a registry of all citizens? At some point, the government needs to have some notion of who you are. The US has no central registry, so it gets pushed out to the periphery like this.
  1. spiralpolitik · 1790264101 · focus · HN ↗
    The Federal government has several central registries. The social security database for example knows which socials belong to citizens and which do not. The IRS database another as are the passport and visa databases.
    The problem is that they aren't interconnected in any meaningful way by design so the bulk of the work gets pushed onto states. Real ID forced a lot of the states to get their act together but it's still a bit of a goat rodeo in places.
    rootusrootus · 1790264281 · focus · HN ↗
    I'd say it's more than a technical problem. The States have primary responsibility for regulating voting, and do not seem at all interested in handing that over to the federal government. Even if it is just to get access to databases (which I assume they already have anyway if they want it).
    seizethecheese · 1790264608 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, and Social Security number is used as universal identifier today because it's the only thing available, it was never intended as such. There's a long history of resistance to central data collection in the US.
    dataflow · 1790265181 · focus · HN ↗
    None of those registries is comprehensive, even if they're literally all joined together, and the only one coming close to it SSA. IRS and passports is are particularly nasty ones to rely on because you'd systematically disenfranchise specific demographics like young adults, poor people, etc.
    deathanatos · 1790266097 · focus · HN ↗
    Just to add to this, not only does the federal government have, for example, SSNs, but, e.g., in my state, supplying a SSN (which then gets verified with the federal government by the state government) is one of the ways in which you can prove citizenship for the purposes of registering to vote.
    There's also birth certificates, which are state-based databases, AFAIK, so there is that route too, and that process is more along the lines of how we're a federation.
    (& for voter registration, probably the most common method, at least IME, is to bootstrap that from your state license/ID; since those are generally REAL IDs now, most individuals would provide birth cert and SSN, since that is the most broadly fulfillable requirement of REAL ID.)
8. thenayr · 1790263720 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
9. KingOfCoders · 1790263849 · focus · HN ↗
  The model was conceived when there were wide plain, few people and traveling messaging results took days to weeks. And it was never adapted. I'd say most of European voting was with shorter distances, higher population density and newer technology.
10. brainwad · 1790263903 · focus · HN ↗
  It's the price paid for not having a general population register. You only need to enroll to vote if you want to vote, and the voter registration is (theoretically) only for that purpose and won't be used for other purposes. Every government interaction in the anglosphere works this way; you always have to reprove your id and address from scratch.
  1. someonebaggy · 1790264241 · focus · HN ↗
    The European population registers are as bad as voter registration btw and as manipulated. I'm currently not registered (which is illegal) as I've been purged from the population register and due to similar bureaucratic excuses, can't re-register. Fortunately it's usually irrelevant, but I have no doubt some government department is bending statistics in its favor by excluding a group of people that includes me.
    brainwad · 1790268443 · focus · HN ↗
    In my country the main registration fraud is tax fraud, as different municipalities have different tax rates so some people claim to live in a low-tax one while really living elsewhere. But it is also technically voter fraud since the two are linked.
  2. crote · 1790265342 · focus · HN ↗
    More specifically, it pretends it doesn't have a general population register. In reality there is a nearly 1:1 match between citizens and SSNs, but everyone just pretends it doesn't exist for political reasons. The fact that the USA was ever able to do a draft is another obvious counterexample.
    brainwad · 1790267140 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not really a 1:1 match. Any foreigner who has ever worked in the US has one too (me included). Plus voter registration also covers subnational elections, which SSN data would not help with.
    Re: the draft - if you are eligible for it you have to register to it, just like voter registration except it's mandatory. If you don't register for selective service you can't get federal college loans IIRC. You also have to register for the draft to apply for a green card?
    spiralpolitik · 1790272313 · focus · HN ↗
    If you are a non citizen, you should have "Not valid for work without authorization" written on your social security card. The social security administration knows who is and isn't a citizen because it's the part of the government that's reviewed the paperwork you have proving your status (birth certificate, naturalization document, work authorization etc).
    (When you become of US citizen one of the first tasks is to take your naturalization document to your local SSA office so that they can update your file and issue you a new card without the notice)
    The only citizens who aren't in the social security database are people who were never registered at birth, either because their parents didn't tick the box when registering or they were born overseas and their parents never registered the birth with the US government. Both can easily get registered via their birth certificate.
    Everyone else in the system has already provided documentation to verify their status one way or the other.
    [deleted] · 1790273499 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    reverius42 · 1790376414 · focus · HN ↗
    The draft also requires registration (I believe to this day, 18 year old males are required to register?), but unlike voter registration, they never "forget" to send it in, or "fail" to do it, or incorrectly "purge" the draft list.
11. bickfordb · 1790263978 · focus · HN ↗
  It's a distinct blue/red state issue. Blue states go out of their way to register as many of their residents as possible and allow same day registration.
  The red states, Republicans use it as a tool to reduce participation of urban, non-white voters and reduce overall participation. They don't consider systematic, passive voter suppression techniques to be voter fraud.
  1. seizethecheese · 1790264901 · focus · HN ↗
    Outside of the US spectrum, there are countries that require all citizens to vote or face fines (Peru for example). I find this interesting, because it's so out of sample compared to the typical political fights within the US about voter registration.
    embedding-shape · 1790265099 · focus · HN ↗
    > Outside of the US spectrum, there are countries that require all citizens to vote or face fines (Peru for example).
    Right, but even for Peruvians, you show up at the both, make your vote and leave, that's it. No thresholds for registering or other stuff, just you and your ID making a vote, even when outside the country. It again makes the US system seem intentionally designed to make less people vote.
    crote · 1790266482 · focus · HN ↗
    This is also seen in the actual voting process itself. Stories about Americans having to stand in the scorching sun for hours are just absolutely mind-boggling to me: you should expect everyone to vote, and provide enough capacity for everyone to cast a vote during their daily commute or grocery trip without a significant delay!
    If a bunch of politicians can make voting quasi-impossible for certain groups of people by meddling with their polling stations, then you don't have a functioning democracy.
    brainwad · 1790267661 · focus · HN ↗
    Australia has both compulsory voting, like Peru, and a separate electoral roll that you have to (and must) apply to get on, like the US. It's not a US thing, it's a common law anglosphere thing.
    seizethecheese · 1790271590 · focus · HN ↗
    Wow, this feels like the worst of both worlds. You have to do it, and you need to jump through hoops. Feels like US federal tax system.
    jacques_chester · 1790308472 · focus · HN ↗
    Hoops? It's easy: <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/enrol/#need" rel="nofollow">https://www.aec.gov.au/enrol/#need
    reverius42 · 1790376328 · focus · HN ↗
    A website to register doesn't prove it's easy. Texas has one of those too, but obviously it's not proof of it being easy since we're here discussing it.
    But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's actually easy in Australia. That still doesn't really explain why it's necessary.
    brainwad · 1790447409 · focus · HN ↗
    It's necessary because we have elections with geographically based electorates, so your address determines which ballot you should receive (and so they know how to fairly resize the electorates). So you need to tell them somehow where you live. Also, the roll of voters has to be printed out many times to use at "check-in" on voting day, so you need to tell them in advance of this printing. They need consistent rolls because after the election they reconcile the various copies after the election to question/fine people who either didn't vote or voted more than once.
    For people not on the roll, there is a special secondary method of voting called a declaration vote that allows you e.g. to vote even if you haven't enrolled. But this process wouldn't scale very well - these votes aren't counted for days after as they need to check the details you declared - and is intended as a safety net.
    This seems a bit like Chesterton's fence...
  2. mikeocool · 1790264982 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not sure it's strictly red state/blue state. I've live in Massachusetts and Minnesota for a while, where they made it very easy to vote so that tracks.
    However, now I live in New York, where they seem to go out of their way to make it difficult. The registration cutoff is several weeks before the election and for at least one election, I found myself wrongfully expunged from the voter roles.
    I think it may just be how corrupt the state government is.
12. rootusrootus · 1790264130 · focus · HN ↗
  > my European brain
  Do you speak for all of Europe? Or do different countries in Europe have different approaches to voting? What you are missing is that this is similar to the US in that we have fifty different States each of which handle voting their own way. There is no singular answer at the federal level, though some people are trying to push in that direction.
13. datsci_est_2015 · 1790264275 · focus · HN ↗
  There’s a rich history of voter suppression tactics in the US. Naïve conservatives refuse to see the straight line from poll taxes to voter registration deadlines. Anti-democratic conservatives take great joy in continuing the racist and classist traditions of their forefathers (both by blood and by tradition), and you’ll find such characters packed in the state governments in the South.
  1. zahlman · 1790312479 · focus · HN ↗
    > Naïve conservatives refuse to see the straight line from poll taxes to voter registration deadlines.
    There is no such line. Of course the state and the people should be clear on who is and is not legally entitled to vote, in advance of actual voting. How could it be otherwise?
    thunderfork · 1790317111 · focus · HN ↗
    >How could it be otherwise?
    I feel like acting like things are impossible which are done in other regions without issue is a losing argument, no?
    zahlman · 1790373998 · focus · HN ↗
    What are you talking about? I made an "ought" claim, not an "is" one. No matter what democratic polity you're in, the government and the people should be aligned about who is and is not allowed to vote for that government. Otherwise you do not have anything that can be called a democracy.
    datsci_est_2015 · 1790345675 · focus · HN ↗
    Caught one! I jest. Probably.
    Voter registration deadlines are a tool for paternalistic racists and classists to enforce their voter suppression agenda with the thinnest veil of plausible deniability. Here you are, declaring their denial as strictly plausible.
    Maybe we could have voter registration deadlines if there weren't so many bad actors who use it as a tool for voter suppression, but apparently ~50% of US state governments can't be trusted with that responsibility.
    Edit: that's actually the issue, inherently; many rules and requirements for voting sound reasonable when presented absent of the context of the entire history of the United States (especially in the apartheid South...), but there are literal neo-Klansmen who will twist and bend those rules into onerous requirements that make sure that only white wealthy people who live in certain zip codes and have plenty of flexibility in their schedule have an opportunity to vote.
    And you fall for that trap with some sort of rationalist aloofness that's so common on this Silicon Valley technology forum. This is why being "woke" matters and the Trumpist campaign against historical literacy is critical to keeping certain states red. The historical literacy in some of these states is already abysmal (based on first-hand conversations), and to think it could get even worse...
    zahlman · 1790373831 · focus · HN ↗
    What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
    > there are literal neo-Klansmen who will twist and bend those rules into onerous requirements
    The year is 2026, not 1956.
    > And you fall for that trap with some sort of rationalist aloofness that's so common on this Silicon Valley technology forum.
    It is not a "trap". It is what actually looking at actual evidence tells me.
    By definition, "historical literacy" is something that tells you about what used to happen. This does not explain what currently happens.
    What currently happens is explained by looking at contemporary evidence. I have, as a Canadian who constantly has to have these arguments because of the American cultural dominance of the Internet, looked into it quite a bit. It does not support your assertions.
14. bitmasher9 · 1790264791 · focus · HN ↗
  American Democracy started from a place of very strict voter requirements (white, male, adult, landowner) and is trending towards fewer voter requirements.
  The registration process is mostly a legacy system to ensure only qualified individuals vote, left over from a time when the bar was much higher.
  1. watwut · 1790319286 · focus · HN ↗
    The "male" bar is not "higher bar". It is just a suppression of rights of half the population. Sake with white.
    And frankly, similat to "landowner". You arw simply biasing it toward slaveowners and their class.
15. toast0 · 1790265025 · focus · HN ↗
  Pretty sure countries in Europe have voter registration too? Here's a page to register in France. [1]
  The US was organized around a very limited federal government (this has changed over time). Each state is responsible for elections within the state. There's no exact national registry of citizens, although Social Security keeps a de facto registry as most citizens are enumerated by that administration and their records include citizenship indication. Strictly speaking, registration with social security is not mandatory, it is required for employees and a child must be registered to qualify for tax credits and it makes administrative tasks simpler.
  Within each state, voting is typically administered by county (or similar level) offices; although I think many states have a state wide process to register.
  A given voter will vote for many positions (and often some propositions), and electoral boundaries for positions don't necessarily align with anything else or each other. So there's a lot of complexity there.
  The residence address of the voter is the important thing that decides which elections they can participate in, but since there is no real registry of residence (de facto or de jure), it needs to be collected seperately.
  [1] <a href="https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/R16396?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/R1...
  1. spiralpolitik · 1790267697 · focus · HN ↗
    Since the motor voter bills in the 90s. Most US states handle voter registration via the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). When you apply for your license or renew you tick the box and it automatically registers you.
    The drivers license database is the defaco registry of where you live and most states require you to update your address within 2 weeks of moving (although enforcement is loose). There is a state identification card for those who don't drive that fulfills the same purpose as a drivers license.
    Since RealID states now have to check immigration status if you request a RealID license (some states will issue non-RealID drivers licenses to the undocumented). There is a further Enhanced ID check that some states do that will indicate that you are a US citizen on the license. RealID and non RealID licenses are clearly marked.
    Basically true voter fraud is largely a non issue because the States generally have their systems together. Voter suppression, which is the goal of most of the voting related legislation of the last 20 years, is however rampant.
16. Ccecil · 1790291883 · focus · HN ↗
  Holdover beliefs from back when only White, male, landowners could vote.
  These tactics don't work as well if you are a homeowner that has stayed in the same (gerrymandered) area for an extended length of time.
17. zahlman · 1790314841 · focus · HN ↗
  Being "the richest country in the world", sharing a land border with a much poorer country, has resulted in a population of people who are legally not allowed to reside in the country (whatever you want to call them according to your political affiliation; one side uses a term rooted in their legal status, while the other side uses a term intended to suggest that their inability to produce evidence of legal residence might be for some other benign reason) that is well into seven figures by all credible estimates.
  Such people are, of course, not supposed to be allowed to vote in federal elections (18 U.S.C. § 611 , but also just common sense). Voter registration represents one way to detect if someone who has illegally entered the country (and it is common knowledge that one of the two major parties treats such individuals far more favourably than the other) is trying to vote.
  It's also, as you were told, seen in France and possibly other European countries; and here in Canada as well — in all these cases, despite the lack of the above problem. It seems to me like an entirely normal thing and I can't really fathom why people would object to it so strenuously. Not everyone is allowed to vote (generally children are not; incarcerated criminals are not in many countries other than the US, including Mexico, Japan and the UK, as well as Australia and NZ on longer sentences; again there is the matter of illegal immigration; in fact, a quick check indicates that non-citizen legal immigrants are not allowed to vote federally hardly anywhere); given the importance of the vote, why would you not want these simple procedures to ensure that voting is done only by those allowed to?
  1. agos · 1790349329 · focus · HN ↗
    my country (Italy) is also full of immigrants, but it's not a huge problem.
    Once I turned 18 I was automatically enrolled in the voting registries, as was everybody else once they got the requirements (18 years, citizenship, no pending penal law issues, etc). While there have been small scale issues, I've never heard of tens of thousands of people purged erroneously from the registries (while it is a regular occurrence in the USA), and no one I know has ever had to do something to be eligible to vote once they had the requirements. I'm sure it happens that people for whatever reason are not automatically registered, but it's not a common occurrence at all.
    > given the importance of the vote, why would you not want these simple procedures to ensure that voting is done only by those allowed to
    because these simple procedures are not necessary to achieve that objective

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