Thread

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

106 points · 195 comments · hn_acker

nblgbg · 1790263499 · focus · HN ↗
When I first registered in Texas, they told me that something didn’t match the details with Social Security and that they couldn’t process my registration. Unfortunately, they never told me exactly what didn’t match. After chasing Social Security and the county multiple times, I eventually figured out that someone had put an extra space in my middle name. The staff processing my request were very helpful, but unfortunately, they didn’t even know what exactly was not matching.
It’s really unfortunate that you have the burden of proving that your information is correct. It took me about 6/7 weeks to complete the entire process.
They also mail you a voter registration card (which itself isn’t useful anywhere), and if, for any reason, it doesn’t reach you, your name will be suspended from the list.
The whole process feels like it’s designed to discourage people from voting.
1. zbentley · 1790264445 · focus · HN ↗
  > The whole process feels like it’s designed to discourage people from voting.
  Possible, but I doubt it. I've worked on the systems that do things like ID correlation/verification on the backend. They're ... imagine the most broken possible implementation you've ever worked on, then imagine it worse, then imagine that it's maintained by entirely different contractors than the ones that built it, with minimal incentive for improvement.
  That's most of government IT implementations, and has been for decades.
  Even when specific systems in this area are implemented well, the regulatory/bureaucratic complexity of the government prevents them from being more than marginally useful at best. I expanded more on some of the concerns/issues in this area in an adjacent comment here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832393">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832393
  1. embedding-shape · 1790264966 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe that's the designed part? I mean, in lots of more "modern" countries (for the lack of better word), voting is basically showing up, presenting ID, then you can check for the results online yourself to see it registered properly, then that's it.
    To me the whole system with voter registration and all other jazz, seems designed to indeed discourage people from voting. Why wouldn't you want it to be efficient and simple otherwise?

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