4 ms·

Virginia purged 1600 non-citizens from their voter rolls and a Chinese student actually voted in Michigan. Clearly requiring citizenship to register as a voter

Virginia purged 1600 non-citizens from their voter rolls and a Chinese student actually voted in Michigan. Clearly requiring citizenship to register as a voter is not sufficient. Poll volunteers should be verifying citizenship.

elmomle 2y ago
One person voting who is not allowed is as bad (in terms of fidelity of the vote to legal voters' intentions) as one person being kept from voting who is allowed. There is copious evidence that these purges, and the atmosphere of fear they create, cause far more harm than they prevent.
- CaliforniaKarl 2y ago
  From one of the articles about what happened in Virginia[0]: > “Governor Youngkin has been clear: every eligible Virginia citizen who wants to vote can do so by Same Day Registering through Election Day—that’s what our law says,” said Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez. > A “final failsafe,” Martinez added, is the ability for residents to use same day registration to vote early or on Election Day. [0]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-in-virginias-voter-purge/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-i...
- gotoeleven 2y ago
  Maybe the best answer would be to just create a system where only people who are legally allowed to vote, and those that aren't allowed can't, and the provenance of any given ballot is very clear and secure.
  - dymk 2y ago
    Just make a system that works, why hadn’t anyone else thought of that?
    - briandear 2y ago
      Nobody wants that. The more mayhem, the easier it is to cheat. Same reason the U.S. has such a complicated tax code.
  - javawizard 2y ago
    Sounds great. How do you do that?
    - zo1 2y ago
      Are we talking about "Voter ID"? If so, isn't that being constantly derailed by the democrats? Just like all the issues with illegals and the border wall, which they don't seem to want to fix and make it impossible.
      - defrost 2y ago
        > Just like all the issues with illegals and the border wall, which they don't seem to want to fix and make it impossible. How do you reconcile that with: Senate Republicans block border security bill as they campaign on border chaos ( May 24, 2024 ) Nearly every GOP senator, along with six Democrats, voted to filibuster a bipartisan bill designed to crack down on migration and reduce border crossings. The vote caps a peculiar sequence of events after Senate Republican leaders insisted on a border security agreement last year and signed off on a compromise bill before they knifed it. Democrats, wary of their political vulnerability when it comes to migration, had acceded to a variety of GOP demands to raise the bar for asylum-seekers and tighten border controls. ~ multiple US news outlets. FWiW I'm not American, and it seems pretty clear that US Republicans vastly overhype the risks associated with the southern border, campaign hard on fear mongering, and tank any efforts by the Democrats to address those problems. Politically it's a common conservative tactic having been used in Australia, the UK, and elsewhere. What's curious is how people seem to fall for this and just accept what they're fed w/out looking into details.
        Izkata 2y ago
        That's the bill that would have facilitated illegal immigration, not stopped it. It sounds decent at first, providing a mechanism to lock down the border, but the "average of 4000 encounters" are 4000 who apply for asylum with a hearing at some future date and are released into the country in the meantime.
        2y ago
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    You mean the system we have already? The number of ineligible voters actively voting is inconsequential. Yes there are a few. Literally a few. It’s not the booger man the GOP would have is believe.
- layman51 2y ago
  I’m trying to think of this from the point of view of the “null hypothesis”. Typically, I have heard that you want to design your system so that Type II errors are more serious. This is where it gets confusing for me because your comment makes me think that people can’t agree on whether it’s a more serious mistake to allow an ineligible person to vote or whether we end up stopping (hopefully temporarily) an eligible voter from exercising their right.
- briandear 2y ago
  Atmosphere of fear? Hypobolic nonsense.
SubiculumCode 2y ago
Virginia also purged my sister-in-law from the voter rolls, a naturalized citizen. Let's just say, I am not amused.
- gotoeleven 2y ago
  Sounds like maybe it would be good to push for accurate voter rolls!
- briandear 2y ago
  So is she unable to vote? Virginia has same day registration, so it would seem like a non-issue for a citizen.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    I have to assume same day registration would require documentation to (re) prove your citizenship. If you can't find your birth certificate or similar on that day it would be an issue that your previously valid registration was removed and you aren't able to go through the process again in one day.
    - sroerick 2y ago
      It depends on the state but generally just requires proof of address or ID, I registered in Illinois with nothing but a phone bill.
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        Oh that's interesting. I don't remember the last time I had to register to vote but it was probably done at the DMV who would already have on record my birth certificate or similar. If just an ID is used, how do they confirm someone is a citizen? Can you only get an Illinois ID if you are eligible to vote?
        sroerick 2y ago
btreecat 2y ago
> Virginia purged 1600 non-citizens from their voter rolls and a Chinese student actually voted in Michigan. Clearly requiring citizenship to register as a voter is not sufficient. Poll volunteers should be verifying citizenship. Over the last 20 years there's no record of a non citizen voting in VA. As a poll worker myself, there's nothing we would check election day that was that wasn't already checked during registration. Asking me to "verify" day of, beyond what we already do, isn't really feasible. Recommend you work the polls and educate yourself on how your particular locale operates.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  This would be my expectation as well. Poll workers can verify that a person is registered to vote in this election, whether the registration was valid is an upstream problem. If a state is allowing intelligible people to register to vote that's a much, much bigger issue and one that can't be solved by poll workers.
- tastyfreeze 2y ago
  Understood. The point of verifying citizenship at the polls is a stop gap response to intelligible voters being on the rolls. The registration is broken. To ensure everybody is a legal voter something additional needs to be done until the rolls can be fixed.
alistairSH 2y ago
1600 alleged non-citizens. There were absolutely citizens on the list. And purging them within 60 days of the election is illegal per federal statute. Youngkin and the GOP are flat out wrong here. The courts have said as much so far. And yet here we are again having to explain all this to somebody who watches too much Fox News.

elmomle 2y ago

One person voting who is not allowed is as bad (in terms of fidelity of the vote to legal voters' intentions) as one person being kept from voting who is allowed. There is copious evidence that these purges, and the atmosphere of fear they create, cause far more harm than they prevent.

CaliforniaKarl 2y ago
From one of the articles about what happened in Virginia[0]: > “Governor Youngkin has been clear: every eligible Virginia citizen who wants to vote can do so by Same Day Registering through Election Day—that’s what our law says,” said Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez. > A “final failsafe,” Martinez added, is the ability for residents to use same day registration to vote early or on Election Day. [0]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-in-virginias-voter-purge/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-i...
gotoeleven 2y ago
Maybe the best answer would be to just create a system where only people who are legally allowed to vote, and those that aren't allowed can't, and the provenance of any given ballot is very clear and secure.
- dymk 2y ago
  Just make a system that works, why hadn’t anyone else thought of that?
  - briandear 2y ago
    Nobody wants that. The more mayhem, the easier it is to cheat. Same reason the U.S. has such a complicated tax code.
- javawizard 2y ago
  Sounds great. How do you do that?
  - zo1 2y ago
    Are we talking about "Voter ID"? If so, isn't that being constantly derailed by the democrats? Just like all the issues with illegals and the border wall, which they don't seem to want to fix and make it impossible.
    - defrost 2y ago
      > Just like all the issues with illegals and the border wall, which they don't seem to want to fix and make it impossible. How do you reconcile that with: Senate Republicans block border security bill as they campaign on border chaos ( May 24, 2024 ) Nearly every GOP senator, along with six Democrats, voted to filibuster a bipartisan bill designed to crack down on migration and reduce border crossings. The vote caps a peculiar sequence of events after Senate Republican leaders insisted on a border security agreement last year and signed off on a compromise bill before they knifed it. Democrats, wary of their political vulnerability when it comes to migration, had acceded to a variety of GOP demands to raise the bar for asylum-seekers and tighten border controls. ~ multiple US news outlets. FWiW I'm not American, and it seems pretty clear that US Republicans vastly overhype the risks associated with the southern border, campaign hard on fear mongering, and tank any efforts by the Democrats to address those problems. Politically it's a common conservative tactic having been used in Australia, the UK, and elsewhere. What's curious is how people seem to fall for this and just accept what they're fed w/out looking into details.
      - Izkata 2y ago
        That's the bill that would have facilitated illegal immigration, not stopped it. It sounds decent at first, providing a mechanism to lock down the border, but the "average of 4000 encounters" are 4000 who apply for asylum with a hearing at some future date and are released into the country in the meantime.
      - 2y ago
- alistairSH 2y ago
  You mean the system we have already? The number of ineligible voters actively voting is inconsequential. Yes there are a few. Literally a few. It’s not the booger man the GOP would have is believe.
layman51 2y ago
I’m trying to think of this from the point of view of the “null hypothesis”. Typically, I have heard that you want to design your system so that Type II errors are more serious. This is where it gets confusing for me because your comment makes me think that people can’t agree on whether it’s a more serious mistake to allow an ineligible person to vote or whether we end up stopping (hopefully temporarily) an eligible voter from exercising their right.
briandear 2y ago
Atmosphere of fear? Hypobolic nonsense.

SubiculumCode 2y ago

Virginia also purged my sister-in-law from the voter rolls, a naturalized citizen. Let's just say, I am not amused.

gotoeleven 2y ago
Sounds like maybe it would be good to push for accurate voter rolls!
briandear 2y ago
So is she unable to vote? Virginia has same day registration, so it would seem like a non-issue for a citizen.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I have to assume same day registration would require documentation to (re) prove your citizenship. If you can't find your birth certificate or similar on that day it would be an issue that your previously valid registration was removed and you aren't able to go through the process again in one day.
  - sroerick 2y ago
    It depends on the state but generally just requires proof of address or ID, I registered in Illinois with nothing but a phone bill.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Oh that's interesting. I don't remember the last time I had to register to vote but it was probably done at the DMV who would already have on record my birth certificate or similar. If just an ID is used, how do they confirm someone is a citizen? Can you only get an Illinois ID if you are eligible to vote?
      - sroerick 2y ago

btreecat 2y ago

> Virginia purged 1600 non-citizens from their voter rolls and a Chinese student actually voted in Michigan. Clearly requiring citizenship to register as a voter is not sufficient. Poll volunteers should be verifying citizenship. Over the last 20 years there's no record of a non citizen voting in VA. As a poll worker myself, there's nothing we would check election day that was that wasn't already checked during registration. Asking me to "verify" day of, beyond what we already do, isn't really feasible. Recommend you work the polls and educate yourself on how your particular locale operates.

_heimdall 2y ago
This would be my expectation as well. Poll workers can verify that a person is registered to vote in this election, whether the registration was valid is an upstream problem. If a state is allowing intelligible people to register to vote that's a much, much bigger issue and one that can't be solved by poll workers.
tastyfreeze 2y ago
Understood. The point of verifying citizenship at the polls is a stop gap response to intelligible voters being on the rolls. The registration is broken. To ensure everybody is a legal voter something additional needs to be done until the rolls can be fixed.

alistairSH 2y ago

1600 alleged non-citizens. There were absolutely citizens on the list. And purging them within 60 days of the election is illegal per federal statute. Youngkin and the GOP are flat out wrong here. The courts have said as much so far. And yet here we are again having to explain all this to somebody who watches too much Fox News.