"For me, the very concept of non-citizens voting is.....bizarre" Its that taxation without representation thing, still an issue two centuries later, if you pay

"For me, the very concept of non-citizens voting is.....bizarre" Its that taxation without representation thing, still an issue two centuries later, if you pay taxes, even just road taxes via gasoline for your car, you get to vote on who spends the tax money ... More practically we use voting as a propaganda technique to calm the voters... "we don't have an oligarchy or dictatorship, you get to choose between two carefully chosen (by us, not you) candidates, and they do have different PR firms... see? thats real freedom so stop complaining!" "Also, the problem with US citizens not being just given IDs is also bizarre" We've historically had problems with J Random Criminal walking up to the counter and asking for someone else's ID and then doing very bad things with it. My own mother supposedly bought a truck in Texas last seen at the border crossing to Mexico, that's only 1000 miles away. Culturally we have a lot of people who work on commission and don't really care about much other than collecting that commission check. We could have .gov bankroll the substantial costs of identity paperwork, but 1) technically you're not supposed to throw away your birth certificate, so the guy who "lost" it should have some skin in the game, so bill them $100 and 2) Obvious voter suppression. At least poor voter suppression. Also aside from cost its a confuseopoly type of situation.. profiting off people being confused. Another thing we're really into culturally. "demanding such paperwork is seen as discriminatory" By a subset of the population with a political axe to grind, yes. Everyone else (maybe 80% of the population?) sees it more as common sense other than it has been used for oppression, stopping people on the street and only demanding papers from certain racial groups. "this separation has never ever been mentioned in my own education" Join the club, which unfortunately includes most Americans who've lived here their whole life and don't understand which laws are local, state, or federal. If you think our laws are confusing, try the building codes some time (ugh). This also is comical because there is a cultural meme on HN that "we" all live in SV or Manhattan even though most of us actually do not. Like us two. So someone will comment about electrical codes for 3-phase wiring for the NAS in their basement in Mountain View as if the whole country works the same way, which it certainly doesn't. Or voting, which is regulated by state.