Thread

1. 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. the_doctah · 1790263179 · focus · HN ↗

      [dead]

      1. 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.

         1. 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. ;)

            1. 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.

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