President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters, a move that is sure to draw legal challenges as the president continues to demand further restrictions on voting ahead of this year's midterm elections.
I still can’t understand why you need to register to vote? I mean, is that really democracy?
I literally do not understand what this question is trying to say, unless it is coming from a profound misunderstanding of what registering to vote actually means.
In the US, all elections are run by the individual states, across a land mass that is bigger than western Europe, and smaller only than Russia or China, and our voting process goes back to the late 18th century. This process actually worked really well for over two hundred years. It is only with the advent of electronic voting in the 1990s that there has been any real problem with our systems.
But regardless, both back in the 1700s and now, registering to vote in the US is simply a matter of providing your identity and address of residence to your state’s electoral board in accordance with that state’s laws. In return your constitutional right to vote in elections is affirmed by your state, again in accordance with that state’s processes, so that when you show up to vote your vote is properly validated and counted.
So given that understanding, what does registering to vote have to do with any system of government?
What’s not democratic about being affirmed as a lawful voter by the state where you reside, in a country where it is impossible to know all your neighbors by sight and where there even now are vast stretches of rural land that have few to no inhabitants?
I literally do not understand your question at all.
Doesn’t every country have some electoral census? I know only about Poland and Spain because that’s where I voted but in both countries you register in the census to indicate where you will be voting. Based on that you get assigned to a voting location that they have on their list. You go there, show them ID, they mark on the list that you voted and you get to place your vote.
The main problem with US is that they, like some developing country, don’t have a proper national ID system. In modern countries you get assigned an ID number at birth (PESEL in Poland, DNI in Spain), every single person has a national ID and you use it to identify yourself. No one says “you can’t require ID for voting people a lot of people don’t have it”. People being unable to identify themselves is a 3rd world issue.
Sure, but I have never been registered to vote in Finland. I just have information about elections and when and where I can vote. Also here even prisoners can vote. That’s why I’m a bit confused about US voting laws.
Do you register as a resident of your new town if you move?
If yes, there’s your registration to vote.
So, why it doesn’t work like that in USA? It sounds so complicated but I’m sure it’s the best system in the world, if you say so.
As far as I know they don’t have a similar registration with the city, the same way they don’t all have IDs. Supposedly because it’s seen as intrusive for the government to know anything about the citizens in the first place. (I’m German and only have internet knowledge about this myself.) Kind of ironic that this now serves as a vehicle to disenfranchise voters.
It’s kind of astonishing how different this is around the world. Well, now I know a little bit more.
I never registered to vote in Canada.
Since I was moving a lot before I left (student, then early-career renter), I would always show up to my local polling station with proof of address (usually a utility bill in my name) and proof of citizenship (usually my passport). They would copy down my details and give me a ballot. (I wasn’t a douchebag who would do this on election day. I’d always go for early voting when the polling station was empty.)
In Poland you have to apply for a kind of “remote location” voting in advance and you can get a paper that let’s you vote anywhere. You can’t just show up anywhere. We also don’t have any sort of early voting here. The polling stations are only open on election day.
Who works at polling stations in Canada? How long do they have to sit there? In Spain it’s random people from the public that are assigned to them so they are only required to be there for one day.
In Canada, polling stations are also run by members of the public. I think they get paid, but it’s a small enough amount that most people think of it as volunteering. In my experience, it’s usually retired people. They also sit there for the day. On election day itself, they’re also responsible for counting the ballots and making sure that the ballots are preserved. (I was once a volunteer scrutineer for one of the political parties, so I got to be there to watch the ballot-counting process.)
Regarding early voting, my recollection is that a subset of polling places were open on two or three specific days in the weeks leading up to the election. Like, if my riding had 25 polling sites, only maybe 4 (one in each “quadrant”) were open for early voting. On the plus side, I think the early voting days were usually on weekends.
On the topic of “remote voting”, my wife is Romanian and used to vote at the train station in Iași, since her official residence was still her home town. I always thought that was an interesting solution to the “voting outside your home district” problem, since it kind of implies that you’re away from home because you’ve been riding a train. That said, since Iași is a university town and most people never seem to update their official residence (like, most of my tech worker friends officially “lived” in their hometown, even if they’d been in Iași for 10 years), the lineup to vote at the train station during a presidential runoff could be hours long. Of course, nobody needs to “register” to vote at the train station, since they just show their national ID card to prove they’re eligible to vote.