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I have never understood why you need to register ahead of time to vote in US. It seems like an unnecessary blocker. In Denmark you just show up on the day, state your SSN, show ID and get a ballot.
No, you absolutely do understand perfectly.
We don't have national ID or election systems. So with early voting it would be legitimately possible to register and vote multiple times in multiple places without the deadline.
Why would your SSN not suffice?
The SSN isn't an identification. In fact, it specifically says on the back of mine that it is not to be used for identification.
It was intended intended to do one thing only: track lifetime earnings to determine retirement benefits. The thing is since there isn't a national ID everyone is required to get, businesses started using it to track people.
You need to do it because it's an unnecessary blocker. That's the point. Poor people disproportionately struggle to jump through the hurdles in place for voting, and Poor people disproportionately vote D. R loves to make voting harder under the auspices of "fraud prevention".
They say, while their supporters are the ones committing all of the fraud.
Also a lot of federal centralization didnt happen until the great depression, we are a federation of states meaning that historically it most shit was handled by the states and not in a states rights way but a who runs the local library sort of way. It was easier bureaucracatically as well allowing the feds to focus on other things.
This is also why random bits of bureaucracy is not standardized across all states, like the DMV sure most states got the memo but then you have whatever the fuck Washington is doing.
It really is also a states rights thing. The federal government, by design, has no say in how elections or driver's licenses work.
That they have stepped in to the driver's license space is an overstep of their authority, honestly.
The federal government is not the sovereign entity, the many states are.
The feds have nothing to do with driver's licenses. States have agreements to honor each other's licenses.
No longer true with real ID.
That's no longer true, the 14th amendment effectively made the constitution sovereign over all the states, period. That's how incorporation works, otherwise states could have handgun bans again like in the 19th century.
I meant in the southern way, not in the wesetern states let us do our own thing sort of way.
Yes, it's utterly stupid. One reason I can point to is that the US never really had a national ID system. The social security number is a hack to get something along the lines of an ID, but it's not reliable enough to make it viable for elections.
It's not "stupid." To call it stupid is to gloss over the fact that it's a calculated, deliberate, malicious tactic of targeted voter disenfranchisement meant to swing elections.
That's because a national ID requirement is illegal.
I can't find the law because I now suck at searching and searching has gotten worse.
Social security number is a national id isn't it?
Technically, the SSN is not and was never supposed to be used for identification.
That went really well, excellent plan, no flaws in sight.
It's intended as a "this is the John Doe I'm talking about" kind of id, not a "the person with this card is John Doe" kind of id.
gives all the smaller governmental departments(like the municipal courts) time to assimilate your info for future contacts like jury duty
Sounds like the least cynical answer I have gotten here.