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. 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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