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Yeah, from the European perspective the American situation is hard to understand. In the U.S., requiring everyone to register their address is going to be met w

Yeah, from the European perspective the American situation is hard to understand. In the U.S., requiring everyone to register their address is going to be met with cries of Big Brother and small but vocal resistance. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of people have to declare an address to file their tax return and/or to have a driver's license. The other piece is that the constitution, written before direct elections were common, explicitly leaves the execution of elections to the states, which makes it hard for the federal government to set standards or require this kind of registration. And it's politically intractable to fix these silly things in the constitution.

crooked-v 7y ago
It becomes much easier to understand when you realize that the modern Republican Party opposes centralized voter ID at the national level and supports stricter but wildly patchwork voting ID requirements at the local level for the same reason: it makes it harder for demographics they don't like to get acceptable IDs for voting. For example, in 2015, North Carolina's Republican state legislature literally looked up the forms of ID statistically most likely to be used by black people for voting ID in the state and banned those for use in voting, while leaving the forms of voting ID most used by white people as valid. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-s...
mschuster91 7y ago
> And it's politically intractable to fix these silly things in the constitution. Which is why I had originally hoped not for Warren or Sanders to end up as Democrat candidate but Biden (which is very unrealistic at the moment)... the general idea was having a left-moderate candidate like Biden get enough votes in 2020 to have a strong Congressional majority in order to fix voter suppression, gerrymandering, electoral college, campaign finance and media ownership (e.g. breaking up Sinclair, re-establishing something like the Fairness Doctrine). Then in 2024 a proper leftie candidate could compete on fair and even terms against whatever the Republicans put up. But since Biden is pretty much toast now thanks to the Ukraine scandal it will probably be Warren who ends up as Democrat candidate and I fear that the Republicans will launch an all-out anti-communist war campaign, aided by Fox, Sinclair and "conservative" rags - pitting 'Trump vs "Communism"' in the 2020 elections may yield a victory for Trump in the current situation...

crooked-v 7y ago

It becomes much easier to understand when you realize that the modern Republican Party opposes centralized voter ID at the national level and supports stricter but wildly patchwork voting ID requirements at the local level for the same reason: it makes it harder for demographics they don't like to get acceptable IDs for voting. For example, in 2015, North Carolina's Republican state legislature literally looked up the forms of ID statistically most likely to be used by black people for voting ID in the state and banned those for use in voting, while leaving the forms of voting ID most used by white people as valid. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-s...

mschuster91 7y ago

> And it's politically intractable to fix these silly things in the constitution. Which is why I had originally hoped not for Warren or Sanders to end up as Democrat candidate but Biden (which is very unrealistic at the moment)... the general idea was having a left-moderate candidate like Biden get enough votes in 2020 to have a strong Congressional majority in order to fix voter suppression, gerrymandering, electoral college, campaign finance and media ownership (e.g. breaking up Sinclair, re-establishing something like the Fairness Doctrine). Then in 2024 a proper leftie candidate could compete on fair and even terms against whatever the Republicans put up. But since Biden is pretty much toast now thanks to the Ukraine scandal it will probably be Warren who ends up as Democrat candidate and I fear that the Republicans will launch an all-out anti-communist war campaign, aided by Fox, Sinclair and "conservative" rags - pitting 'Trump vs "Communism"' in the 2020 elections may yield a victory for Trump in the current situation...