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.
Registering candidates in the US doesn’t matter, I could run for president or any other office and no one would reject my application to be on the ballot, unless I didn’t have enough signatures.
I would be surprised if you’ve ever heard of Vermin Supreme, or any of the other third party candidates for US president, much less the lower offices.
Can exclude, not all of them do, I think it has to be a specific part of the sentence (ie not automatic) because some high court ruled that some years ago.
I meant not all criminal offenses necessarily cause an exclusion from voting rights. If I recall correctly there is a list of specific ones for which people can be sentenced to loss of voting rights.
German Law is very sane in regards to voting rights.
§ 13 of the German Federal Election Act (BWG) stipulates that only who is disenfranchised as a result of a judge’s decision is excluded from the right to vote.
This provision does not conflict with the general principle of equality in Article 3 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz - GG) and the principles of equality and universality of the vote, because the right to vote is not automatically revoked, but may only be revoked by a judge’s ruling if certain legal requirements are met.
However, this exclusion as a result of a German court ruling is only possible in a few cases expressly mentioned in the Criminal Code (StGB) and the Federal Constitutional Court Act (BVerfGG) and applies for a maximum of two to five years. Exclusion from the right to vote applies if a person has been sentenced to at least six months or at least one year in prison for the following offenses, for example:
Preparation of a war of aggression and high treason against the Federation
Treason and disclosure of state secrets
Attack against organs and representatives of foreign states
Obstruction of elections and falsification of election documents
Bribery of members of parliament
acts of sabotage of means of defense or intelligence service endangering security (in this case, a prison sentence of at least one year is required).
In these cases, the deprivation of the right to vote is at the discretion of the court in accordance with the special criminal law provisions and is not an automatic consequence of the conviction for these criminal offenses.
Furthermore, the right to vote can be revoked by the Federal Constitutional Court due to the violation of fundamental rights.
The disenfranchisement from voting is btw. also the foundation that makes one ineligible to be elected.
According to the Federal Election Act, anyone who has German citizenship and is of legal age on the day of the election is electable. This does not apply to those who:
have lost the right to vote and therefore their eligibility to be elected as a result of a court ruling or no longer have the capacity to hold public office
is permanently dependent on a statutory caregiver / guardian
or is in a psychiatric hospital due to a conviction
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.
Registering candidates in the US doesn’t matter, I could run for president or any other office and no one would reject my application to be on the ballot, unless I didn’t have enough signatures.
I would be surprised if you’ve ever heard of Vermin Supreme, or any of the other third party candidates for US president, much less the lower offices.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermin_Supreme
Btw it’s insane to exclude people in a supposed democracy based on criminal convictions.
It’s by design, if everyone voted, there would only be a very limited few republikkklowns in office, if any.
It seems that they exclude people wherever the commenter lives too.
Can exclude, not all of them do, I think it has to be a specific part of the sentence (ie not automatic) because some high court ruled that some years ago.
Who is excluding people where you live and why can they do that? Isn’t it handled centrally by a single governmental body?
I meant not all criminal offenses necessarily cause an exclusion from voting rights. If I recall correctly there is a list of specific ones for which people can be sentenced to loss of voting rights.
That sounds logical for offences that have something to do with trying to overthrow the government or the like
German Law is very sane in regards to voting rights.
The disenfranchisement from voting is btw. also the foundation that makes one ineligible to be elected.
In France you have to register to vote as well. It takes about a minute and you can do it online or at the town hall
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.
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.