Explain Like I'm 5 (ELI5)

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ELI5 why do people in USA need to register to vote? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 month ago by verstra@programming.dev to c/eli5@lemmy.world

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I'd expect the state to have a list of all its citizens and their basic personal info (age) which could be used to determine their eligibility for voting. In my country, we get a "invitation" to the vote, with your voter station and info on how to change it.

Instead, I'm seeing posts about USA's "voter rolls", which are sometimes purged, which prevents people from voting. Isn't this an attack on the voting system and democracy itself?

So why doesn't USA have a list of voters? Are they stupid?

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[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I’m not sure how that would work: is your vote tied to your identity?

Having a registration of all legal voters allows you to verify people only vote once, only legitimate votes are counted, and your vote can be anonymous.

No one knows who I voted for (except probably all of Lemmy, lmao), but on my way in I verified who I am, and they checked off that I was listed as a voter, and checked me off as having voted.

[–] EgoNo4@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

There is a check via an ID scanner before going into the voting booth that ensures you've only voted once. No one know who I voted for either. The only downside to this is that if you haven't updated your ID when changing address, you would have to go to the district on your ID to vote. This somehow makes sense since for parliamentary elections, for example, you have different candidates for different districts.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

In cases like that for us, I think there’s some sort of provisional voting where you cast your ballot but it’s not counted until everything checks out. In your example, perhaps they’d confirm you moved and make sure you only voted in the one location. It’s not something they can do immediately though. However I’ve never had reason to find out the details on this so I may be a bit off base