Goddammit Texas!
Goddammit Texas!
Edit/Update: It turns out that my last name has a capitol letter in the middle and they put a space in it. Thank god. I can actually vote this year.
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That’s called privilege. You literally don’t realize what a burden it is for some people to comply with voter registration requirements, because your life is such that it’s easy for you.
The "privilege" you are talking about is the exact same privilege the parent comment assumed:
I just have to show up with my ID, doesn’t matter if it’s for the EU parliament or the local city senate.
The "privilege" you are talking about is "having an ID card". Every time you obtain, renew, replace, update, or otherwise contact the state bureau handling ID cards (usually, the DMV), they are required, under federal law, to update your voter registration unless you specifically decline.
The European standard is "get an ID card, show up and vote". We implemented the European standard back in 1993.
Proving my point here. Yes, that's privilege. It seems like normal to you, as all privilege does. But it's very difficult for a lot of people.
But it’s very difficult for a lot of people.
It is, indeed, but the proper solution here is to lift them up to the bar, not lower the bar down to them.
Lack of ID prevents you from getting and keeping a job, attending school, accessing the banking system, getting a PO box, getting licenses. Being unable to vote is the least of your problems.
The proper solution is not to figure out how to make voting accessible to those without an ID. The proper solution is to get them an ID.
Nope. Voting is a fundamental right of a citizen. An illiterate dude living in a cave who has never even seen a concrete building should have the right to vote, if he's a citizen. It is a civic responsibility for us to lower the bar for voting as low as possible to disenfranchise as few people as possible.
All those things you said about IDs are true, and yes we should be helping people get them. But in the mean time we must not disenfranchise them.
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A huge fraction of people (again, poor people, whom I'm sure you're too privileged to associate with) do not file taxes and are not required to file taxes. See we're getting into that thing I mentioned earlier where I give a thousand examples and you individualize each one.
How would an illiterate dude living in a cave register to vote?
If he knows his date of birth and his social security number, he can register in California. If he doesn't know his SSN, they can look it up for him. In Texas, he doesn't get to vote.
even then you don't need this recurring manual registration mess.
There is no recurring manual registration. You only need to register once in your lifetime.
If you move, you have to update your ID within 60 days, and every time you update your ID, they update your voter registration automatically. (unless you decline).
That has been federal law since 1993, and is pretty much equivalent to European standards.
You really have to go out of your way to not be registered to vote.