There’s a good number of sincere democrats who are being hamstrung by an aging and self-interested Democratic leadership.

The Democrat Party, as an organization, exists first and foremost to fundraise and the best way to do that is to seek corporate donors, thanks to Citizens United, since its easier to court one or two very large donations than hundreds or thousands of small individual donors.

What happens politically and the resultant laws are basically secondary. You, the taxpayer, doesn’t pay the DNC to do its job. Donors do.

I mean - as much as it's the "better" of the two options right now... the modern democratic party is still a center-right party controlled mostly by corporate interests and lobbying money.

They favor keeping the system that is producing rampant inequity stable. With a laissez faire approach to social issues.

As opposed to republicans, who favor socially regressive and oppressive policies, double speak, and who's mantra is mostly "Don't get caught. But if you do get caught - deny, deflect, denounce" rather than anything resembling ethical behavior.

Neither of them are particularly good options for governance. They have no motivations to "learn" anything.

One is a fast moving, malignant cancer - the other a slow moving auto-immune disease. Both kill the host.

We desperately need fresh air.

> That's not true. If it's a company doing it, you have the choice to not be a customer of the company.

Ah yes, 2026 America, famous for its wealth of commercial competition and diversity of business practices. Just the other day I was bragging to my friends how many reasonable options I have for so many of my critical necessities, including televisions and other cheap plastic cheap manufactured in China and white-labeled by glorified dropshippers.

The corporations are quickly becoming the government you are so quick to demonize. The death panels that FoxNews spoke about 24/7 back in 2010 are now embedded into our insurance industry, except you have no democratic recourse and will be statistically drained of your wealth before your offspring have a chance to inherit it, all while they watch you die and stress over the Byzantine processes that are “economically efficient”.

That would be easier if the US economy wasn't entirely controlled by duopolies

Clearly, Luigi found a far more effective way.

The weapon, ostensibly, in a democracy, is the ability to vote your leaders out.

The government has bigger guns.

Against whom?

> Broken implementations were the desired outcome, because the constant doubt allows for things like disenfranchising people via voter roll purging.

I have trouble believing that, given that the "design", such as it is, took place over many decades of inter-agency regulatory/technical wrangling and organic growth.

At different times and points, the people that built what we think of as "the voting system" had totally different goals. Sometimes those goals were "make sure everyone eligible can vote as easily as possible"--and that's laudable! But more often the goals were "build $niche_system_component to comply with $specific_regulation". The number of times, during the design phase, where the people planning actually wanted to suppress votes and were empowered to make a part of the system actually do that was probably a rounding error compared to times when people fully accidentally moved the system in that direction due to bureaucratic myopia and shitty implementation.

I'm all for blaming political actors for things they intentionally do that are bad! Defunding the EPA? Bad! Getting into stupid wars? Bad! Banning mail-in voting? Bad! People with power and pre-meditated goals did those things, and many more, and should be opposed for it.

But "voting system is broken due to bureaucratic inter-operation failures, and state government staff have to do a postmortem and data recovery (ballot reprocessing)" isn't one of those times.

> Outside of the US spectrum, there are countries that require all citizens to vote or face fines (Peru for example).

Right, but even for Peruvians, you show up at the both, make your vote and leave, that's it. No thresholds for registering or other stuff, just you and your ID making a vote, even when outside the country. It again makes the US system seem intentionally designed to make less people vote.

It's not really a 1:1 match. Any foreigner who has ever worked in the US has one too (me included). Plus voter registration also covers subnational elections, which SSN data would not help with.

Re: the draft - if you are eligible for it you have to register to it, just like voter registration except it's mandatory. If you don't register for selective service you can't get federal college loans IIRC. You also have to register for the draft to apply for a green card?

The draft also requires registration (I believe to this day, 18 year old males are required to register?), but unlike voter registration, they never "forget" to send it in, or "fail" to do it, or incorrectly "purge" the draft list.

In my country the main registration fraud is tax fraud, as different municipalities have different tax rates so some people claim to live in a low-tax one while really living elsewhere. But it is also technically voter fraud since the two are linked.

I see that at least two people saw fit to downvote the above without comment.

I cannot fathom a legitimate reason why. Perhaps someone might care to, for example, quote the part of the article I overlooked, in which Republicans are supposedly openly discussing their supposed racist motivations for desiring "a proof of citizenship mandate for the voter registration process, and a nationwide photo ID rule to cast a ballot"? Or provide real evidence that the SAVE act would actually disenfranchise people who actually do have a legal right to vote? Or perhaps an argument for why the franchise should be extended to people whose presence within the American borders is already a violation of federal law?

Just to add to this, not only does the federal government have, for example, SSNs, but, e.g., in my state, supplying a SSN (which then gets verified with the federal government by the state government) is one of the ways in which you can prove citizenship for the purposes of registering to vote.

There's also birth certificates, which are state-based databases, AFAIK, so there is that route too, and that process is more along the lines of how we're a federation.

(& for voter registration, probably the most common method, at least IME, is to bootstrap that from your state license/ID; since those are generally REAL IDs now, most individuals would provide birth cert and SSN, since that is the most broadly fulfillable requirement of REAL ID.)

I'd say it's more than a technical problem. The States have primary responsibility for regulating voting, and do not seem at all interested in handing that over to the federal government. Even if it is just to get access to databases (which I assume they already have anyway if they want it).

Yes, and Social Security number is used as universal identifier today because it's the only thing available, it was never intended as such. There's a long history of resistance to central data collection in the US.

None of those registries is comprehensive, even if they're literally all joined together, and the only one coming close to it SSA. IRS and passports is are particularly nasty ones to rely on because you'd systematically disenfranchise specific demographics like young adults, poor people, etc.

With paper ballots or even an auditable paper trail from electronic voting machines, it's basically impossible to commit large-scale voter fraud, and every audit that I'm aware of in recent first-world elections has shown voter fraud to be a tiny number of votes at most.

We should be very, very wary of non-auditable electronic voting though.

For context:

Illegal immigrant voted: https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/colombian-national-plea...

6,600 noncitizens registered, 400 noncitizens voted, undisclosed how many, if any, are unlawfully in country: https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2026/6600-nonci...

I explained this in a sibling comment to this one, but it's +4 points [flagged] because someone didn't like the explanation.

I can literally prompt ChatGPT with

> What examples of American voter fraud (real or alleged) have been promoted in right-wing media within the last 28 days?

and find multiple results with considerable detail. If you want to hear anecdotes from ordinary people who've witnessed it (or at least had good reason for suspicion), it's not hard to find the right circles for that, either. But by its nature, few have access to the information that would be needed to evidence it properly.

More importantly, though, there are plenty of people who can point at how insecure the system is and how cheap and easy it would (or should) be to fix that. It's hard to understand how there can be such strenuous objection to fixing it if there is actually no problem. It's hard to understand how there can be so many people who are definitely following the law, but would face a hardship if expected to prove it even minimally.

Canadians must identify themselves in federal elections (https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do...) and normally register in advance (https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=reg&do...) which is usually as simple as ticking a checkbox to give consent for the CRA (equivalent to IRS) to pass on your data to Elections Canada (which is independent of the government). None of this is even slightly controversial here; even our most left-wing parties (and the centre of gravity of our entire system is generally considered to be well to the left of the US's) are not trying to eliminate the requirement.

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>How could it be otherwise?

I feel like acting like things are impossible which are done in other regions without issue is a losing argument, no?

Caught one! I jest. Probably.

Voter registration deadlines are a tool for paternalistic racists and classists to enforce their voter suppression agenda with the thinnest veil of plausible deniability. Here you are, declaring their denial as strictly plausible.

Maybe we could have voter registration deadlines if there weren't so many bad actors who use it as a tool for voter suppression, but apparently ~50% of US state governments can't be trusted with that responsibility.

Edit: that's actually the issue, inherently; many rules and requirements for voting sound reasonable when presented absent of the context of the entire history of the United States (especially in the apartheid South...), but there are literal neo-Klansmen who will twist and bend those rules into onerous requirements that make sure that only white wealthy people who live in certain zip codes and have plenty of flexibility in their schedule have an opportunity to vote.

And you fall for that trap with some sort of rationalist aloofness that's so common on this Silicon Valley technology forum. This is why being "woke" matters and the Trumpist campaign against historical literacy is critical to keeping certain states red. The historical literacy in some of these states is already abysmal (based on first-hand conversations), and to think it could get even worse...

> Surely the government already knows who is a citizen

No. There's a lot more nuance there than you'd think, in the "broken regulatory and technical processes" domain, not political issues.

Example questions with unsatisfactory (not "impossible to do well", just "broken due to decades of technical and regulatory debt") answers: what government agencies, plural, are the authority of who is a citizen? Do they all agree? Do they provide ways for different agencies to check identities against their registries? If so, how do they match information in a citizenship-check request against their internal systems? By name? If so, how do they handle different name spellings (marriages, name changes, present/omitted middle names, non-ASCII)? By some other identifier? If so, how do they validate uniqueness of that identifier (SSNs are not secure/are widely leaked for tens of millions of people, addresses change and can have multiple residents, not everyone has a passport number, state-issued IDs/drivers licenses aren't stored centrally by the federal government)? If a check-requested identifier is invalid, can they tell whoever requested the check why it's invalid? Do these validation requests happen in real time/one at a time, or periodically in batches? Do the people sending the validation requests have any contact at all with the people providing information about why unsuccessful requests failed?

I've worked on these systems--human and technical. It's hard even for a functioning, outcome-focused, centralized government. In this problem domain, the US federal government is none of those things, and has not been for many decades (or ever, in some areas).

Sure, some of the issues are politically-caused (one party has an incentive to not fix problems that privilege their agenda), but most of them are accumulated failures with no malicious agenda as the cause.

It does. However the party of small government doesn't believe in SQL joins between tables so kicks the problem down the states. ;)

> Citizen moves? Have them inform their new municipality about their change of address

That is exactly what voter registration is?

Wait until you hear about all the dead people receiving benefits.

But seriously, your assumptions about how the USA works are just wrong. Voting is not handled at the federal level. Citizenship is.

Yes, it's next to the 90 deals in 90 days, lower prices and no new wars.

I'm confused by your flippancy, are you suggesting it doesn't happen?

one party says its rampant and cant prove it, they think the other party relies on non-citizens voting

the other party says its not rampant per say and resists all capability to prove it, because they think the solutions to proving legal voter status would be difficult for their citizen voters to accomplish

amusingly, the limited audits done always find improper votes for the first party, although nothing rampant

ironically, Commonwealth and European countries all have the voter status proving requirement that the first party is asking for, despite this being seen as an extremist right wing idea to be distanced from

in the US, it is accurate that any voter registration tweak has been used to decline legal voters ability to vote so the left - despite being more congruent ideals with the rest of the developed world - does have unique considerations and skepticism

did I miss anything?

The US doesn't have a population register in the same way as European countries do.

For reference, the Finnish voting experience is such that about a month before the election you get a card to your registered address, telling what the election is and what's your polling place. Then you show up on the day in question, show an ID, they check that against their list and off you go.

In about half of the States you can.

That system is ripe for abuse. The presidential election is usually (not always) decided by a few swing-states. It sure wouldn't be hard to fly a bunch of people in for a few days, put them up in hotels and feed them, give 'em a little bit of cash, so they go vote, as one example. So now you have to prove they live in, as you said, a community.

If you had said 'immigrants' instead of non-citizens you would have a stronger point. I don't have an issue with non-citizen immigrants voting. Part of the challenge is a.) proving someone exists and b.) proving they live in the district in which they voted. How do you solve this? Voter registration.

Ignoring all that, voting is both a right and privilege of citizenship. This can be revoked. As an example, convicted felons cannot vote.

The 15th Amendment says (note the word citizens):

> The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The 19th Amendment then gave women the right to vote:

> The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

So, it is very much a law to be a citizen in order to vote.

As an aside, what if a non-citizen of an EU country was vacationing for a month in said EU country. Should they be able to vote? Of course not.

Simply because it's ripe for abuse. I would never expected to vote as a non permanent resident, any place I live.

Because of United States law.

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The federalist papers make it pretty clear the intention was not that everyone should vote. The idea of active citizens being the ones who vote is everywhere in Republicanism, whether you look at the early French Republic and their restrictions on the national guard, to constitutionalism in England, or the early American Republic. In Athens, not everyone got a vote. In Rome not everyone got a vote. In cities across Europe following the Magdeburg charter, not everyone got a vote. The original limitation of propertied people in the constitution was the correct move in hindsight. The issue with suffrage for those that are not active and giving a positive impact to the country is exactly what you see happening today, politicians pandering to certain voter groups with hand outs instead of sticking to principles.

If there was a long history of good faith efforts to make voting easy for every Texan, I would be more inclined to assume good faith. But, there have been many instances of Republicans putting their thumb on the scale to reduce the electoral power of cities, so, I am slower to assume something like this is an honest mistake.

Try voting the CCP out of power. Let me know how it goes.

sounds like you should go move there!

If that's the case you should really buy that <1%. You have a 50% chance of 100xing your money.

https://trends.google.com/explore?q=how%2520to%2520emigrate%...

Yeah

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What rights were taken away?

It turns out that in the end, enforcement is the only thing that matters. Written law doesn't matter, and interpretation doesn't matter, except insofar as they affect enforcement.

I'm pointing out the irony originally missed. Glad you noticed, or sort of.

He is immune from prosecution. He can probably go stand in the press room door and get away with turning people away. His staffers are not.

Perhaps the next president will wave the magic executive order wand and reduce the age of eligibility for Medicare to zero. Or something else equally spicy and very progressive. Republicans used to understand that eventually the other side will win an election and do unto you everything you have done unto them, but apparently the current crop thinks they will be ruling forever.