If you live in Texas, make sure to register to vote! The deadline is coming up in a few days on the 7th. Note that for Texas you must register either in person or by mail, you cannot register online unlike most states
Find information on how to register to vote anywhere https://vote.gov/
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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?
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.