Mildly Infuriating

It's by design. We could make it easier, but certain groups benefit from making it difficult.

It's wild.

There are some local and state governments trying to pass automatic voter registration, but it's an uphill battle, not unlike most things that would generally benefit the public good in this country.

There's never been a United States ID card, for... reasons. As a Californian, I could get a California ID card, at the same place I got my California Driver's License, if I didn't intend to drive. The forms have the option of adding Voter Registration using the same information (birth certificate, proof of residence) at the same time. But some states make it all much more complicated.

As a European, the whole registering to vote thing is honestly one of the wildest parts of the US elections to me. It’s so unnecessary complicated and prone to errors/manipulation.

...what the electorate consider a bug the politicians consider a feature...

So… I’m in Texas , been here a long time.

most ballot counts in the primaries and general are counted by secret software and hardware run by ultra conservative families the last 20 plus years. Recounts are not allowed and exit polls not used anymore because of unpredictability.

Nobody cares, no political party wants to change : not a topic in forums anywhere, even in conspiracy minded chat rooms, and it’s been this way forever ( since before 2000).

There is a ton of crazy that is ignored .

I’ve seen how the system works, I’ve been at the county chair level. Nobody will criticize it . There is a quiet culture of people knowing it’s invalid but decide to leave it be.

It's so unnecessary complicated and prone to errors/manipulation

That's why it exists - to make it more inconvenient for people (especially in certain demographics) to vote.

Yeah but we have voter id. And for some reason Americans think it is unreasonable to have to have a government issued ID as this would disenfranchise all the people that don't have an ID... Which I think is also weird. Just make IDs accessible to citizens at low costs and implement voterID across the board.

Depends on the country though. In France you must be registered to vote (you're assigned a specific voting office). It's a single registration foe everything, not for each vote

Although the process is online, and takes like 5mins.

You also get a voting card, but it's technically optional, it just speeds up the process in the voting office.

the sound bites you hear about voting are intentionally misleading: you have to show up with an id to vote here too and that's not where to controversy lies; but the soundbites are setup to make it sound like it is to engender the reaction you've shared.

the controversy is registering to vote; not voting; and the conservative states intentionally make registering as heavily bureaucratic as possible in the hopes of minimizing the number of people who can successfully finish to process of registration.

they've also dedicated hundreds of millions on dollars to understand and enact policies to keep the poor and minority groups from voting.

usually democrats sit back and let republicans openly do it, but sometimes democrats do it themselves; the democratic governor of california just made automatic voter registration illegal; just as the conservative states do.

Imagine you moved countries, and were entitled to vote in both.

You have to tell the new country you exist there.

That's the most common failure mode in the US, when you move states or even counties and there's a miscommunication or lack of communication between where you came from and where you are. There is no top level federal voter database.

There are other issues, but this is the most common.

You don't vote at a federal level, you vote at a state level, for federal stuff. (And state/local stuff)