It’s a new federal rule in progress to make it harder to vote. The rule requires more documentation before voting, but does not instruct the government to help provide documentation.
A voter would need a passport (expensive and slow) or a birth certificate with your name on it. If you changed your name after birth, that won’t work. And there are tens of millions of people with changed names, especially married women.
Note that women are already less likely to vote in favor of the political party creating these rules.
It’s a law designed to make it harder to vote, and disproportionately so for groups that tend to vote heavily for Democrats. Republicans generally do better in elections when less people vote.
The officially claimed reasons for it are that it makes it illegal for non-citizens to vote and it reduces voter fraud. It’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. The types of fraud it would prevent are basically non-existent in modern times. Studies suggest fraud is on the order of a couple dozen votes in a Presidential election year, and it almost always gets caught.
The most common types of voting fraud tend to be Republican politicians voting in the wrong state or in two states, and the occasional nutjob who justifies it with “The Democrats are voting twice so I should too!” None of it happens at a frequency high enough to change outcomes.
It’s a US House of Representatives bill that, if passed into law, would require you to submit documentary proof of citizenship, in person, in order to register to vote or update your voter registration.
This would mean that, for example, if I moved from my home state to (say) Illinois, I would have to physically take my person and my citizenship documentation to a voter registration office, in order to be able to vote. Even though I am an American citizen by every possible definition (both parents were born in the US to US citizens, I myself was born in the continental US), I could lose the ability to vote simply because I moved. Hell, I wouldn’t even need to move to a different state; in theory, just moving to a new address within the same city is enough to require an update to your voter registration.
I’m sure you can see how this could cause millions of Americans to lose their right to vote, for no reason other than the onerous burden of having to personally appear at a voter registration office.
Now add to this the fact that many states (particularly those of a certain political persuasion) are actively removing polling places and voter registration locations, and you can see a pattern forming.
Comments
It’s a new federal rule in progress to make it harder to vote. The rule requires more documentation before voting, but does not instruct the government to help provide documentation.
A voter would need a passport (expensive and slow) or a birth certificate with your name on it. If you changed your name after birth, that won’t work. And there are tens of millions of people with changed names, especially married women.
Note that women are already less likely to vote in favor of the political party creating these rules.
It’s a law designed to make it harder to vote, and disproportionately so for groups that tend to vote heavily for Democrats. Republicans generally do better in elections when less people vote.
The officially claimed reasons for it are that it makes it illegal for non-citizens to vote and it reduces voter fraud. It’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. The types of fraud it would prevent are basically non-existent in modern times. Studies suggest fraud is on the order of a couple dozen votes in a Presidential election year, and it almost always gets caught.
The most common types of voting fraud tend to be Republican politicians voting in the wrong state or in two states, and the occasional nutjob who justifies it with “The Democrats are voting twice so I should too!” None of it happens at a frequency high enough to change outcomes.
It’s a US House of Representatives bill that, if passed into law, would require you to submit documentary proof of citizenship, in person, in order to register to vote or update your voter registration.
This would mean that, for example, if I moved from my home state to (say) Illinois, I would have to physically take my person and my citizenship documentation to a voter registration office, in order to be able to vote. Even though I am an American citizen by every possible definition (both parents were born in the US to US citizens, I myself was born in the continental US), I could lose the ability to vote simply because I moved. Hell, I wouldn’t even need to move to a different state; in theory, just moving to a new address within the same city is enough to require an update to your voter registration.
I’m sure you can see how this could cause millions of Americans to lose their right to vote, for no reason other than the onerous burden of having to personally appear at a voter registration office.
Now add to this the fact that many states (particularly those of a certain political persuasion) are actively removing polling places and voter registration locations, and you can see a pattern forming.