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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Comparing Russian elections to US elections may as well be comparing Vichy France elections to US elections. They are quite different beasts.
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.
Bit depressing.
Even in the US, you’re legally required to for quite a number of things. The most obvious being driver’s license/ID cards.
The standard is good behavior, not other people.
Also ID cards don’t require it. License’s do.
In my state, the state-issued photo ID cards absolutely do.
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.