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Why is this even a thing in the USA? In Belgium, everyone over the age of 18 just gets a letter in the mail. Making people go for tedious registration and what not sounds very undemocratic to me.
That's because it is! Just one of the thousands of many little ways the American Republicans have made life worse for everyone, including their own. Gerrymandering and tampering with voter registration are historically Republican strategies that serve no purpose other than voter disenfranchisement. They can't win a popular vote and they know it, so their best strategy is to prevent people from voting in the first place. Hence their history of arcane voter registration rules, disgustingly absurd gerrymandered districts, removal or last-minute changing of acceptable voting locations in Democratic areas, voter intimidation, even active voter endangerment via refusal of water bottles during summer heat - not as in they wouldn't give you water at the voting lcoation - no, you aren't allowed to have water, even if you brought your own, even if someone showed up and tried to donate water to you. They took it right out of our hands. Meanwhile we were standing in a line in a parking lot with no shade in 96F weather for multiple hours because local republican leadership also shut down all other democratic voting locations within an hour's drive.
It is disgustingly undemocratic, dangerous, abusive and frankly it's embarrassing. These are not politicians, these are spoiled little children stamping their feat and screaming "no, I get to be king, and you have to go home!" They actively will not associate with the word "democracy" anymore because it's too close to accidentally being called a Democrat.
If you've noticed Americans being a little more pissy than usual recently in the last several years, it's largely because people are starting to open their eyes to this truth. It's nothing new, but it is starting to get noticed. Trump flipped over a big ol' rock and suddenly everyone saw all the worms and slugs squirming underneath.
I actually caught myself mouthing "What the fuck" at the water part of your comment. That's some third world country shit. Everyone's entitled to water, it's the most basic human right. How would one argue that a ruling like that benefits the people?
Their argument, such that it is, argues that Democrats are running the country into the ground and that they cannot be allowed to make decisions for other people. Not that the people should be allowed to govern themselves, no, the people should only be allowed to vote for things that are "in their best interest" as defined by Republicans.
Which is, obviously, horseshit. But a semi-significant percentage of our population eats up the anti-Democrat messaging and keeps enough of them in office that they can continue fucking with human rights without retribution.
"ThEy'Re BuYiNg VoTeS wItH wAtEr!"
I've never heard about not being allowed to bring water, but I've definitely read about not being allowed to hand out water/sell water.
There is no legitimate reason, only excuses to cover for their bullshit.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/senior_lawyers/resources/experience/2024-january-february/is-line-warming-legal/
It's called "line warming" or "line relief" in case anyone wants to look up more about it.
The GOP is very undemocratic
On the surface, it's not bad. If, for example, you move from one state to another, your previous state may not know you don't live there anymore. So if they see you haven't voted in that state for a while, they'll assume you don't live there and remove your name from their registration.
The problem is, as usual, how it gives conservatives in the US cover to remove legitimate voters. If you haven't moved but also haven't voted for the last several election cycles, you might get removed even if you intend to vote in this election. And you can see how that's a short jump to "Oh no, we accidentally removed a whole bunch of people who were going to vote against us and darn it, wouldn't you know there's no way to fix this in time!"
They always know, especially if you’re paying your taxes correctly. Try moving to Colorado. You’ll get registered immediately without doing anything and your ballot will be mailed to you. You don’t ever have to do anything in person.
There’s no reason to unregister someone from voting. In any state.
In Kentucky, you have to go register yourself. And unless KY tells CO you've registered there, they wouldn't know.
? And why would that matter?
Because they know they can't win if they do that.
Belgium has a population of only 11.7 Million, a population density of 387 per square kilometer, and a whopping 98.8 percent of the population is Urban.
We have 30 times your population, 1/10th of your population density, and 20% less of our population is Urban.
The United States has 28 Million people, more than twice your entire population, that MOVES every year. Over a million people immigrate into the United States every year, meaning we could literally populate your entire nation in just a decade.
All of that means you cannot simply "send everyone a letter".
It's like the old saw "Everything works fine in a small network." So no offense but relatively speaking Belgium is a tiny network compared to what we've got going on in the United States.
Does the IRS send a letter to everyone in the USA every year?
Nope. You file your taxes and send them in. They don't mail you anything unless it's necessary.
The irs literally did send almost everyone in the country a letter during covid… it’s not nearly as difficult as y’all are making it out to be.
Now go look up the error rate on those letters.
You're making the claim that there were errors, how about you back it up with the data. At this point you're just fearmongering (again).
Yeah, because people were PUBLICLY angry as hell because they didn't get them. This was common knowledge just 4 years ago and it's still on the IRS website.
https://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/news/nta-blog/irs-notices-delayed-again-look-for-insert-with-revised-deadlines-for-certain-notices/2020/12/
Trying to mass mail over a hundred million people doesn't work well.
No, they do not.
Colorado handles it just fine. Sounds like you’re making excuses for your state, don’t lump all the states in with yours.
We aren't discussing a single state and if we were then Colorado has a population half of Belgium.
Everything works fine in a small network.
We literally are discussing single states. The Federal government doesn't run the voting, it's individual states that do. So all voting improvements literally happen at an individual state level.
what a hilarious excuse for your state being shitty. This is such a tired and untrue trope it isn't even funny anymore, it's just sad.
We are literally not. You need to scroll up and review.
"Why is this even a thing in the USA?" - Federal Government Question
"Does the IRS send a letter to everyone in the USA every year?"
Those are the questions I was asked and responded to.
Yes, I'm aware of how our election system works. You should try figuring out how threaded comments work.
USA is big therefore they can't have good things is bullshit.
USA has a lot of people to send mails to, but it also has a lot of people to collect taxes from, those taxes pay for the mails.
The cost to send mails should scale linearly with population, just like taxes. Therefore economics is not a problem. If anything, more mails should mean cheaper per mail since economics of scale take place to bring down costs.
Logistics isn't an issue either. Just tell each state to sort it themselves. Each US state has roughly the same population as European countries, and they manage the logistics.
Yes, and it works at the State level...which is precisely why I drew the parallel to European Countries.
HOWEVER I wasn't asked about States sending them. Every comment I replied to was asked in the context of the FEDERAL Government.
Threaded comments are not new tech, figure it out.
False.
Your point is?