• schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    As a European I have always been confused when Americans talk about “voter registration”. The way it works in my country is you are legally required to register your residence with the government and that registration is automatically used to determine a voter registry (just filtering by age, citizenship and exclusion due to criminal convictions all of which is information already known to the government). I always just get a letter a few weeks before elections informing me where my polling place is.

    • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Well you see, in the United States, the way some politicians, specifically ones belonging to a certain very authoritarian political party manage to get elected is by making sure people don’t or can’t vote.

      This is often coupled with throwing a huge hissy fit about “voter fraud” which doesn’t actually exist on any remotely meaningful level.

      • uis@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Well, voting fraud is a thing in Russia. Stuffing when one person throws multiple ballots at once, carousel when one persion votes one multiple stations, dead souls(reference to Gogol) where dead or absent people vote and Venedictov’s box - when Sobyanin repeatedly claims that electronic voting results will come immidiately when voting ends, but don’t long after all physical stations reported results.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Comparing Russian elections to US elections may as well be comparing Vichy France elections to US elections. They are quite different beasts.

          • uis@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Maybe, but I am more familiar Russian elections. Personal experience.

            Also important note: election fraud != voting fraud. Voting fraud is just one type of election fraud. In Russia most widespread type of election fraud is not registering candidates.

            • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Registering candidates in the US doesn’t matter, I could run for president or any other office and no one would reject my application to be on the ballot, unless I didn’t have enough signatures.

              I would be surprised if you’ve ever heard of Vermin Supreme, or any of the other third party candidates for US president, much less the lower offices.

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermin_Supreme

    • lud@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Btw it’s insane to exclude people in a supposed democracy based on criminal convictions.

        • lud@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          It seems that they exclude people wherever the commenter lives too.

          • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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            5 months ago

            Can exclude, not all of them do, I think it has to be a specific part of the sentence (ie not automatic) because some high court ruled that some years ago.

            • lud@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Can exclude, not all of them do Who are “them”?

              Who is excluding people where you live and why can they do that? Isn’t it handled centrally by a single governmental body?

              • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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                5 months ago

                I meant not all criminal offenses necessarily cause an exclusion from voting rights. If I recall correctly there is a list of specific ones for which people can be sentenced to loss of voting rights.

                • lad@programming.dev
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                  5 months ago

                  That sounds logical for offences that have something to do with trying to overthrow the government or the like

    • redisdead@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      In France you have to register to vote as well. It takes about a minute and you can do it online or at the town hall

    • uis@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Yep. Same. You just go get stamp in passport once, then you just go to voting station with passport. That’s it. Oh, also by default(when you get passport) you get stamp that you live where you lived during filing.