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People don't have the right to vote, at least not unconditionally. That's not how this works, nor how it has ever worked. If you register to vote in Georgia, t
by burfog 8y ago
People don't have the right to vote, at least not unconditionally. That's not how this works, nor how it has ever worked.
If you register to vote in Georgia, then move to Ohio and register there, you might have the right to vote in Ohio. You don't have the right to vote in Georgia, nor does anybody else have the right to vote in Georgia with your identity.
If you register with "Hyphenated-Name" after having previously registered with "Hyphenated Name", that doesn't mean you get to vote twice! You don't have that right.
Mistakes are a big deal. An improper vote is a denial of the rights of the legitimate voters to have their votes properly counted.
Fixing all the issues is difficult, but there is one simple improvement: have the federal government, perhaps the social security administration, publish a mapping from human to voting district.
- ceejayoz 8y agoYou're setting up several strawmen here. > People don't have the right to vote, at least not unconditionally. None of our rights are unconditional. You can give up free speech rights by joining the military, and we've got things like noise ordinances. You can lose your right to bear arms by being a felon. Et cetera, et cetera. > If you register to vote in Georgia, then move to Ohio and register there, you might have the right to vote in Ohio. You don't have the right to vote in Georgia, nor does anybody else have the right to vote in Georgia with your identity. No one has argued otherwise. > If you register with "Hyphenated-Name" after having previously registered with "Hyphenated Name", that doesn't mean you get to vote twice! You don't have that right. That's not what's being discussed, at all. People register to vote as "Hyphenated-Name". The state checks their databases and doesn't find a matching name because they got their driver's license years ago as "Hyphenated Name" (or because the DMV doesn't support a hyphen, or any number of other reasons). They get purged off the rolls. > Mistakes are a big deal. An improper vote is a denial of the rights of the legitimate voters to have their votes properly counted. Most people improperly on the rolls aren't improperly voting. If they moved to another state, they're almost certainly not coming back to double their vote. If they died, the chances of someone else pretending to be them is vanishingly small given the severe repercussions of getting caught (which has to be balanced against the small chance of a single vote making a big difference).
- masonic 8y agoThe state checks their databases and doesn't find a matching name because they got their driver's license years ago Having a driver's license isn't even a prerequisite to vote, nor does it confer eligibility to vote.
- ceejayoz 8y agoPlease, read the linked Politifact article. There's a reason I included it. > Under a 2017 Georgia law, a voter registration application is complete if information on that form exactly matches records kept by Georgia’s Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. Driver's license isn't required to vote, but if you have one, your voter registration form has to exactly match it. If you don't have one, you've got the same issue with the Social Security Administration with hyphenated versus non-hyphenated, misspellings, character limits (NYS DMV knows me as "C, M" for example), etc.
- masonic 8y agoDriver's license isn't required to vote ... which is exactly what I wrote.
- ceejayoz 8y agoI never said it's required to vote. I said that if they have one, the State of Georgia checks that your voter registration matches your name exactly on your driver's license, and rejects your registration if it doesn't.