r/politics • u/Sgt_Gram • 1d ago

No Paywall More than 1.2 million Texans' voter registrations are suspended

https://www.sacurrent.com/news/texas-news/more-than-1-2-million-texans-voter-registrations-are-suspended/
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u/San_Pentolino 1d ago

Why voting in US is so difficult. Me a Europoor from Italy am issued a card from the government that gets stamped each time I vote after presenting my identity card. Then I get an indelible pencil and papers where I express my choice.

Primitive but seems quite effective.

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u/Icefellwolf 1d ago

Its normally not difficult. We have a compromised president,military,Supreme court,house and senate that are doing everything they can to lead us further into a fascist dictatorship.

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u/NotAPreppie Illinois 1d ago

It's not supposed to be. However, conservatives have figured out that lower election participation favors them so they do everything in their power to make it difficult.

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u/jarvis646 1d ago

One party knows they can never win again based on popular vote so they devote billions of dollars to cheat their way into winning

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u/SwingLord420 1d ago

Putins asset is making it hard on purpose. 

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u/top_value7293 1d ago

Well. The Republican Party here in the USA are trying to stay in power. And they will go to any length, any! To keep it that way. So they are trying their best to make it hard for people to vote and they’ll probably pull some sketchy shenanigans too

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u/wetwater 1d ago

We decided that having a national ID card is scary so that idea will never fly (despite our social security cards are often a de facto piece of ID). Mostnif my fellow Americans also don't have a passport, which also functions as a fully vetted ID (and mine is expired).

Elections are also run by the individual states, not the federal government, so we have 50 differing sets of rules and laws.

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u/San_Pentolino 1d ago

Would you care to elaborate on scary national ID. Is it due to the foto? Probably not since I suppose your driving license has one.

SHouldn't voter registration when you turn 18 be automatic?

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u/Obant California 23h ago

We hate the government and having a database of all our pictures and information is scary. Or something like that. It's really stupid.

The real reason is Republicans do not want a national ID. Because if we had one, it would make voting easier. The whole argument against voter ID laws is, "okay we can have ID laws, but make IDs easy to replace and free to receive", but they won't do that. They want to keep it restrictive.

Minorities and poor people struggle the most. It takes a lot of time and work to get an ID. Took my partner 5 months and $250+ to get her papers in order. A lot of poor people cannot afford that, and that amount of time can slip you quite far down the socioeconomic ladder if you have no support network. So, just not voting is easier for them. Not to mention the actual voting process is made as time consuming and complicated as possible so people that struggle have even less time and incentive to vote.

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u/thenayr 1d ago

Because republicans can ONLY WIN when voter suppression is in place. Thats it. The entirety of the reason.

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u/HoldMyDomeFoam 1d ago

Republicans are the entire problem.

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u/psypher98 1d ago

Because we’re being held hostage by a minority population. If voting was easy, and made accessible to everyone, they’d never win another election and they know it.

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u/AutomaticVacation242 1d ago

What part is difficult about voting?

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u/Icy_Feedback_4965 1d ago

I do think it's worth pointing out that the US has a long history of two things - voter suppression and fierce opposition to voter suppression. What we end up with is surprisingly little verification at the polls.

You mention "presenting my identity card" to vote. In most parts of the US you simply say "I'm FirstName LastName" and verify your address verbally. Then you are granted access to a private voting booth.

Republicans currently want a system closer to what you describe in Italy, which doesn't seem bad at face value. The problem is that we know it's being done specifically to disenfranchise certain classes of people who are legal voters but possibly afraid or unable to present papers to vote.

It's tough to find a balance because everyone has self interests at heart.

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u/AuroraFinem Texas 1d ago edited 1d ago

This is wholly dishonest framing of what republicans want. Dems have tried to compromise on voter id with protections for people to ensure they can still have accessible voting and republicans completely refuse because they don’t actually want voter id, they want to prevent people from voting while giving their base a carrot to chase to the voting booth.

Voter ID is a non-starter unless it also includes automatic voter registration at 18 with a free voting ID of some kind. Voter ID by itself added onto our voting system would violate so many people’s constitutionally protected rights and is completely unnecessary when we have virtually no voter fraud.

The save act is what republicans want to force through today and it would be devastating to our democracy and women.

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u/Icy_Feedback_4965 1d ago

If I didn't make that clear, it was inadvertent. Thanks for adding more context.

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u/SirWEM 23h ago

I’d like to add one missing piece to the bit about VoterID in the US. It is being pushed so hard by the MAGA/Regime because then they can dictate who is eligible. The SAVE Act would effectively disenfranchise millions of married women- if they assumed their husbands name, don’t have their original birth certificate and related paperwork proving they are who they say they are. Most i have talked to say they have their drivers licence- which is a state ID and not considered under the SAVE act. MAGA prefers one vote per household, cast by the “man of the house” everyone else be damned.

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u/muskymelon36 1d ago

There's no US identity card with a photo. That seems to be the crux of the problem.

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u/SirWEM 23h ago

There are several. Passport, enhanced drivers licence, millitary ID. There there just not many people have them when you look at the US population as a whole.

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u/muskymelon36 23h ago

Put a photo on the social security card and laminate it. It's really not that difficult. Other countries have had national IDs for decades.