Russia launches propaganda campaign in Europe “Russia is not my enemy”

[u/kyoukidotexe]

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/4028250-russia-launches-propaganda-campaign-in-europe-russia-is-not-my-enemy.html

[u/Mars_target]

Registered vote riles me up... Why the hell do you have to register to vote?

In Denmark, every legal citizen over the age of 18 automatically receives a ticket in the mail with location and timerange some weeks before an election. You go to the ballots, ID yourself, hand in the tickets, and you get the voting paper.

Everyone can vote, no barriers.

[u/Scarred_Ballsack → u/Mars_target]

Saaame. Why would you need to register to vote? The government already knows your citizenship status and place of residence. Why does there need to be another barrier?

Well of course we know why, it's because if less people vote, that makes it easier to corrupt the election system.

[u/SpecsyVanDyke → u/Scarred_Ballsack]

Plenty of heavily democratised countries register to vote. Not everything is a conspiracy

[u/Scarred_Ballsack → u/SpecsyVanDyke]

I register with my municipality to let them know where I live, and every time an election comes up the government automatically sends me the voting papers. Why would I need to specifically register for elections? Seems like an unnecessary extra step.

[u/SpecsyVanDyke → u/Scarred_Ballsack]

In some countries you don't register your address in the same way.

[u/Scarred_Ballsack → u/SpecsyVanDyke]

I'm specifically referring to the ways elections are influenced in the United States. You're correct though, changing your address in the US is a hassle, you need to do separately for many different government agencies. Tbh it's not the registration itself that bothers me, it's that people periodically get purged which makes it unfair. Also the inefficiency of having to change your address across multiple agencies, the government should be more interconnected in that way.

[u/kaltulkas → u/Scarred_Ballsack]

Registering to vote just means letting the gov know where you’ll be depositing your ballot so they know where to send you the information and prepare the sign up document.

I’ve lived in several cities while keeping my residence to my parents home for official papers, what good would it have been to me to be forced to vote 6 hours away from where I was actually stating because they « knew my residence »?

[u/Scarred_Ballsack → u/kaltulkas]

That's not a problem. There's still an option to vote from someplace other than where you live, by just letting the government know you'll be abroad or mandating someone else to vote in your stead. But in the Netherlands it's not actually allowed to vote in municipal or provincial elections if your primary residence is someplace else, so the point is moot. The default option works fine for like 99% of eligible voters, only the homeless and expats need extended options and those are available.

[u/kaltulkas → u/Scarred_Ballsack]

Here (France) students are still attached to their parents fiscally but mostly don’t live with them. They would be excluded by something automatic. You get registered automatically at 18 and then have to spend 5mn online or return a simple form when you move if you want to vote where you moved. It’s still voter registration but I fail to see how that has anything to do with vote manipulation.

[u/Scarred_Ballsack → u/kaltulkas]

Yeah I get the confusion. We're talking about the US system, where you're only eligible to vote after registering. And there this process isn't automatic, the default option is simply not having the right to vote. The US government also has a habit of periodically purging the voting registrations of large groups of people and neglecting to tell them about it, until it's already too late for them to reapply before the elections. Those groups of people are often ones that are disadvantaged in society, or minorities, or generally more likely to vote for the democrats. This doesn't mean it's impossible to vote but it systematically makes it harder for people to make their voices heard.

It's really scummy, which is why the default should just be to register everyone at their listed address like it is with us. Since there's really very little reason not to.

[u/silverionmox → u/kaltulkas]

Registering to vote just means letting the gov know where you’ll be depositing your ballot so they know where to send you the information and prepare the sign up document. I’ve lived in several cities while keeping my residence to my parents home for official papers, what good would it have been to me to be forced to vote 6 hours away from where I was actually stating because they « knew my residence »?

So let me get this straight: you give the government an address for official papers where you aren't able to receive them, and then you have to tell them your actual address anyway because you can't receive your ballot where you tell the government to send official papers.

Why not simply give them the correct address right away?

[u/kaltulkas → u/silverionmox]

I can get my official papers since it’s my parent’s address. I could also have voted there, but I preferred to save the transportation and declare a different voting location.

This applies to plenty of people ranging front students to seasonal workers. I kept my official residency at my parents place until I bought one to save the hassle of changing it every time I moved.

You can also choose to vote from your secondary house’s location if you have one, or choose to vote where you work if it’s a different location from where you live. There are plenty of reasons really.

[u/silverionmox → u/kaltulkas]

I can get my official papers since it’s my parent’s address.

Then you can also get your ballot there, making "register to vote" a moot point.

I could also have voted there, but I preferred to save the transportation and declare a different voting location.

Then you actually can't get your papers there if it's necessary and the whole problem is still caused by you giving the wrong address to send papers to.

This applies to plenty of people ranging front students to seasonal workers. I kept my official residency at my parents place until I bought one to save the hassle of changing it every time I moved.

If you're moving around so much, then clearly the transportation is not a problem.

There are plenty of reasons really.

Which are all easily covered by mail-in or online voting.

[u/ChaosKeeshond → u/Mars_target]

In the UK at least a large part of it is that there simply is no central register of citizens. It's actually a point of pride in the UK. Ostensibly, you're born free and your registration with various services is always on a needs-must basis.

The government can't send a ballot to every single Brit because... it doesn't know who they are. It knows who most of them are. But not all. And the information is scattered - duplicate records for the same person can exist within the same service for multiple locations etc.

They are talking about introducing ID cards but there are concerns from the public about the government getting increasingly authoritarian.

[u/gabrielmuriens → u/ChaosKeeshond]

That is also a shit system.

The UK government, any government, cannot make responsible decisions without good statistics and data. In the past year, the Labour government has repeatedly demonstrated that they don't in fact have an accurate measure of their own country. One of the chief reasons for that is that they simply don't have data of their citizens.

There are ways for a government to store and handle data in a way that does not harm its citizen's rights. But without information, there cannot be effective governance.

[u/Mars_target → u/ChaosKeeshond]

That sounds like anarchy. All citizens are registered at birth here and our tech system works really well. Everything can be done digitally

[u/silverionmox → u/ChaosKeeshond]

In the UK at least a large part of it is that there simply is no central register of citizens. It's actually a point of pride in the UK. Ostensibly, you're born free and your registration with various services is always on a needs-must basis.

In reality, the government knows where you live. If you think they don't, try not filing your taxes. It's just everyone keeping up appearances, for the price of a lot of extra administration.

They are talking about introducing ID cards but there are concerns from the public about the government getting increasingly authoritarian.

In practice, it just streamlines a lot of administrative (and some other) actions. And it's a safeguard against identity theft - no one here needs to be paranoid about someone getting hold of their old utility bills.

[u/s3bbi → u/Mars_target]

Since the guy you replied to is talking about AFD it's the same in Germany. There is no "registered voters" because by definition every german can vote. You are also informed per mail for upcoming votes on local, state and federal level. You can then either vote in your voting places, or vote per mail or vote early in person most of the time in city hall. So no idea why that guy is talking about registered voters.

[u/ver_million → u/Mars_target]

It's the same in Germany. No German would say "registered voter". /r/AppropriateOwl1370 for sure isn't from Germany.

[u/AppropriateOwl1370 → u/ver_million]

Freundchen. Tritt mal auf die Bremse. Ich habe eine Angelsächsische Redewendungen verwendet. Kein Grund einen auf ??? zu machen.

[u/ver_million → u/AppropriateOwl1370]

Erzähl halt keine Scheiße. Mit Wohnsitz in Deutschland wird man als Wahlberechtiger automatisch ins Wählerverzeichnis eingetragen, genausowie in Dänemark und anderen europäischen Ländern (gibt Ausnahmen wie z.B. Großbritannien).