| |||||||||||||
Citizen LinusCitizen LinusPosted Sep 14, 2010 13:21 UTC (Tue) by rbetts@gweep.net (subscriber, #21779)In reply to: Citizen Linus by Janne Parent article: Citizen Linus
In the US, one enlists themselves to the eligible voter list at their primary residence. This can be done by visiting your town/city/county offices, or, by federal law, can be done when applying for a drivers license. In most states, one registers as a party member, or as unaffiliated.
Election ballots are combinations of city/town, county, state and federal offices. There are a *lot* of elected officials in the US.
Political parties play a substantial role in organizing and executing elections (and in organizing the affairs of constitutional bodies - which are often not specified in any great detail constitutionally or legislatively). For an example specific to elections, in most states, political parties are responsible for nominating and supplying poll workers. Our parties certainly look raucous and crazy from afar (and they are), but they have many practical responsibilities which might be harder to notice at a distance.
In Finland, if you receive a paper that allows you to vote, how does the paper-issuer know which address to send the paper to (if you have more than one residence). Or, in general, how does the issuer know where you live to send even a single paper? Or how many eligible residents there at each dwelling? It seems some registration somewhere must be necessary to issue accurate voting permits.
I apologize for the off-topic comment - I'm proud to be a US citizen and hopefully sharing a few simple details might offset in some gentle way the ugly name calling that occurs above..
(Log in to post comments)
Citizen Linus Posted Sep 14, 2010 13:50 UTC (Tue) by damic (guest, #7275) [Link]
I'm Swedish and not Finish, but I guess Finland have a similar system as Sweden do.
In Sweden we have a Civil registry that is maintained by our Tax Agency so that they can tax you correct. That seems to always be the top priority of any government to get the taxes. :)
Anyway, since for taxation purposes we have a Civil registry that is also used when voting. It is kept up to date and when it it time to vote, the government simply runs a query in the register to get the name and address of everyone that is eligible to vote.
If we temporary move a short period we simply ask for our post to be forwarded to the temporary address (done on internet in a few minutes), and the same thing is also done when moving permanently.
I recently moved to México, I registered that with the Swedish tax-agency in order to not be taxed in Sweden. And 3 weeks ago I got my voting papers for the 19th of September election in Sweden sent to my México address, I went to the Swedish embassy in México with my ID and voted. The whole thing took a total of 3 minutes at the embassy.
Granted, Sweden only have around 9 million citizens, so I guess we can do things not possible in other bigger nations. But it is pretty convenient. :)
Citizen Linus Posted Sep 15, 2010 3:31 UTC (Wed) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
Ah, but in the USA, there was a long-standing distrust of centralized databases of all sorts. My impression is that in recent decades this has mostly fizzled, but e.g., one of the objections to the original Social Security Act was its assignment of a unique number to every eligible individual. And we still have *separate* databases for voting, for taxes, for driver's licenses, for passports, for birth/death/marriage, and so on and so forth. (Mostly maintained by totally separate government agencies. E.g., I think I'm registered to vote in two different counties, because I never bothered to unregister when I moved, and they don't really check the lists against each other.)
Oh, and IIRC it's pretty much legal to just make up the name you want to use when registering for these databases.
The USA's ways of doing things are all very... historically contingent.
Electors Posted Sep 14, 2010 21:53 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
To give you another example of a different system.
In Britain every residence gets sent paperwork about once a year, and in any case before a major election. The envelope has an address but no name, and insists you open it and not redirect it under any circumstances. Inside is a list of people who are currently registered at that address. If the list is fine you can fill out a web form, call a phone number, or send back the form with just a signature.
Otherwise you correct the list, removing anyone who is no longer living there and adding new people, then post it back. If an election is held the latest register is used, everybody who can vote is sent a card telling them about the election, and fractions of the list are sent to every district. You don't need the card to vote, you just tell the officials your name and address, they give you a ballot and write the number of the ballot next to your name on their list.
Lying on the form, or at the election itself, is possible, and clearly sometimes happens, but with turnout so low it's difficult to justify any system which would reduce participation further, e.g. requiring ID to vote (although this is done in Northern Ireland where vote fraud had become endemic).
Electors Posted Sep 15, 2010 16:12 UTC (Wed) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] How do they get a list of all addresses which are residences? Seems like someone would have to know ever building address in the country and whether or not someone lives there. P
Electors Posted Sep 15, 2010 20:39 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
The UK has taxes (e.g. council tax) which apply only to occupied residential properties. So, yes, the government does know where people live (and who lives where). It's known this for many decades, and so far has done nothing bad with the knowledge.
|
|||||||||||||