Voter registration is in itself undermining democracy. You can't have a democracy, if every single elegible person isn't allowed to vote at a moment's notice.
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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I don't think registration is a problem. It's the fact that you can be deregistered.
In South Africa, you get automatically registered as a voter when you receive your national ID document at 16. At that point you only need to register where you intend to vote once. We usually get 3 voter registration weekends at every polling station weeks before any election.
America's elections are really disorganized and antiquated, even compared to a mid-sized African country. It really should be something handled at the federal level and standardized along with a federal ID system.
But what is the whole point of registering to vote? If you don't have to register, every single person who is eligible to vote, will be able to vote. Even if they figure they want to vote half an hour before the polls close.
I simply can't see any point that isn't votersuppression for why you should have to register to vote. There is no point in having a register of possible voters in an anonymous voting system.
It's so you can be on the voter roll and be marked off when you vote, they can then confirm if anyone has been running around to multiple polling stations voting multiple times.
Or if someone has been stuffing ballot boxes.
It's not anonymous though. Your specific selections on the ballot are supposed to be private but who you are and whether or not you cast a ballot are not. Your overall point is sound but the system is not intended to function in the way you're describing.
It's mostly for vote integrity. It makes sure that no-one can vote twice. It also makes sure that no-one can stuff ballot boxes.
Voter suppression comes in when laws around it are poorly written, or poorly implemented. It's still crazy to me that voting in the US is not handled by a non-political federal level organization like it is in most mature democracies.
They should have been able to cast provisional ballots.
Does the USA not register voters at the polls?
Some places you just show an Id and go. But that all depends on how much your state hates the poors. Extra barriers ensure that mostly the right people are voting. You would not want peasants votes to be flooding the zone too much.
our blue state allows you to register at the polls, red state makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to vote for Democrats.
You don't even need to show an ID in my previous state. You just tell the person at the door what street you live on.
Different states might do it different ways, but in my state, you have to be already registered.
Yep. A very different example is here in Minnesota: you can register on election day at the polling place, and one accepted way to identify is having someone "vouch" for you.