Link: https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/
Warning: you will get texted so use your disposal number.
With all the news about citizens discovering their voter status has been lapsed, and new rules for being a voter, everyone should check.
But also, sometimes you forget. I have new neighbors who finished moving a month ago, and when I asked if they changed their mailing address and checked their voting status, we discovered they weren’t.
It is wild to me that in the US you’re not automatically registered to vote. The idea that you have to go through a manual process to exert one of your most basic constitutional rights is unfathomable to me.
Here when you turn 18 you can just vote. It’s that simple. No registration, no ticking a checkbox somewhere, you can simply go out there and vote the moment you’re 18.
It’s to prevent double voting. Because even federal elections are conducted by the individual states, there is no central register for who has already voted. There’s also early voting. So in theory one could vote on multiple states on the same election.
That’s the official reason, anyway.
Nothing about the US system is particularly geared to prevent double voting.
I get that you don’t have a federal register (something you should really fix tbh) but requiring manual registration when you could, oh idk, simply register people when they are born and then later automatically provide them a unique ID they can vote with? (I’m not even talking a government ID for the purposes of identifying yourself to law enforcement and stuff, I’m talking even just a voter ID for the sake of voting only)
Then have part of the number in that ID identify the state you’re from if you want to prevent crossing borders to double vote (kinda like how credit card numbers have that info on them).
It’s what they do here anyway, I’ve had an ID since I was like 4, and it’s with that document that I and everyone else votes.
Though I know the US is probably too anti-democratic for this and none of the parties in power want to change jack.
We’re the oldest democracy in the world and as such are likely the most poorly designed.
Their comment is based on this criteria:
Countries are classified as democracies if they meet the following conditions:
Executive: The executive is directly or indirectly elected in popular elections and is responsible either directly to voters or to a legislature.
Legislature: The legislature (or the executive if elected directly) is chosen in free and fair elections.
Voting: A majority of adult men has the right to vote.
Source https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-worlds-oldest-democracies/
For anyone interested: the prehistoric origin of democracy, ie before the Greeks, is also interesting
