I still can't believe that in a system where you need to register to vote, registered voters are not believed to be registered.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2026
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I still can't believe that in a system where you need to register to vote, registered voters are not believed to be registered.
It's because of a particular quirk in the law that Republicans have been mad about for years.
When you register to vote, there is no Federal requirement that you actually show proof of citizenship. You still have to affirm (under penalty of perjury) that you are a citizen on the form, and that affirmation comes with severe legal penalties if you are lying.
Republicans think that non-citizens are abusing this in droves. However, many non-citizens would like to be citizens someday. Why would they give the government a written document, with their address and identifying information, which confesses to a crime which leads to jail time and deportation, just for the opportunity to vote before they actually get their citizenship? State Governments have access to all the information after all, they would just need to look it up with the Feds to find out if it is correct, or needs to be flagged for review. It's all bonkers. Registration fraud like this simply doesn't happen.
But some Republicans believe that myth so much that, in Republican-controlled states, if you show up to register with the Federal form to register (and not their State form that requires proof of citizenship), they put you in a type of voting purgatory [pdf warning] where they only let you vote for Federal offices.
I don't think it's the ID thing tbh. I was thinking about this recently because adding a requirement for proof of citizenship to vote was one of the questions on the recent referendum in alberta. (There were 10 questions, it was not just about separation).
No level of government requires proof of citizenship when you show up to the polls to register in canada. Like the system you describe, if you show up and are not on the list, you have to register at the poll and face consequences later if you were not a citizen and lied about it.
In canada you need to be 18+, vote in the correct election (i.e. vote in the area you are eligible to vote in) and be a citizen. You have to show something tying you to the location, and you promise you are 18+ and a citizen.
In the US there is a patchwork of laws about who is allowed to vote based on criminal convictions. It's not like a one time event like turning 18 or becoming a citizen. Sure, people give up citizenship, but that's rather rare. Maintaining a voters list with the criminal disenfranchisement laws seems like a fucking nightmare.
Another way racism fucked shit up for folks.
Of course it's the racism, but the ID thing is used to make it sound less racist. We do have to show ID to register to vote in the US, but like your experience in Canada that is mainly to establish your address, and which district you belong to. But all those IDs are administered by the States, and are issued to non-citizens as well as citizens, so cannot be used as proof of citizenship. For that, you need a passport, naturalization paper, or US birth certificate, all of which are not normally carried by people casually (and are expensive to replace if lost). It gets even more complicated if you changed your name for any reason since you were born.
The US has a long history of putting up barriers to voting so that low-income voters don't bother, going all the way back to the poll taxes of the early 1900's. So while this is camouflaged as an ID issue, it's just a modern poll tax.
I have a passport, and then paid again for the passport card, then paid a third time for the Enhanced License that makes my State license equivalent to a passport card. So I am covered, but I could afford the extra $30 for each card. That homeless guy in the subway who was born in NYC but has had all his paperwork stolen for years should have just as much of a right to vote than I do, no matter whether or not he has the proof on his person.
I don't think I was clear about the racism remark. Yes, the ID thing is racist/xenophobic/scapegoating.
However, I was specifically calling criminal disenfranchisement racist. And saying that the existence of criminal disenfranchisement makes maintaining voter rolls uniquely challenging.
In the US, elections are administered by the States, and the issue of criminal disenfranchisement is generally up to each state.
Trump himself is a good case study in this. While he has been convicted of a felony, the State law in Florida regarding voting explicitly references the law in the state where he was convicted (New York in this case), and NY law says that felons are only disenfranchised when they are in jail. So, since Trump never went to jail, he was never disenfranchised.
So, there are states where felons are barred for voting for life, while Trump still gets to vote.
Yes, this is what I was referring to with the "patchwork" of laws. Because there is no country wide list of eligible voters, and because a person's ability to vote can change so many times and is different in different states, it would be a massive undertaking to generate a reliable voters list. Requiring ID to prove citizenship would not mean the person was eligible to vote. People who vote when not eligible to do so based on prior felonies face new felony charges.
Jeffery Woodard, 62, has been indicted by a grand jury on five counts of Wrongful Registration (Class D Felony), three counts of Convicted Felon Voting (Class D Felony) and one count of being a Persistent Felony Offender, Second Degree.
Broseph got charged with being a felon! Land of the free!
I picked the first case that showed up in my search and it's a white dude but the racism part came from how a lot of these laws came at the same time as laws meant to criminalize behavior associated with Black folks who were previously enslaved, either criminalizing generally harmless behavior (loitering) or criminalizing things that result from being excluded from the formal economy.
Because it's all bullshit.
Let's see.....
Jason Kirkland - citizen.
Pedro Pascual - non citizen.
Pedro Pascal - non citizen. But very European!
Alina Lee - non citizen. (But excellent porn actor).
Fred Mayer - totally a citizen
John Doe - citizen.
Jane D Vargas - non citizen.
That's how easy it is to remove our right to vote. Months later oh oops! I guess these were citizens, we'll returned them from the gulag when they pay for IDs.
Only count the votes I want you to count sounds a lot like election rigging, sure glad they're helping expose all this big bad fraud because otherwise I'd think it was self serving.
I suppose similar letters to places like FL and TX are slowly making their way via the old pony express and would get there in a couple months...
How is this legal? Only the states have control over elections not the federal government.
So anyone who's brown?
I couldn't wrap my head around how it's so hard for the US to figure out who is allowed to vote or not but then I remembered disenfranchisement laws 😬
My only question is why they're trying shit in a solidly blue state like California instead of messing with a swing state like Nevada? Is Stephen Miller just that neurotic about where he went to high school?
California has the largest population of MAGAts in the country. They're a minority, but by sheer numbers there are more here than any other state. They're hoping to flip CA. Not gonna happen, but that seems to be the goal.