mekka okereke :verified:
It's September 5th!
Hey US people, please remember to check your voter registration every *5th* between now and November!
✅ July 5th
✅ August 5th
✅ September 5th
⬜ October 5th
⬜ November 5th
Check your voter registration for free online here:
You can also request your mail in ballot, so that you don't have to stand in line for hours or miss work on voting day.
Why check every month? Because some of y'all have been de-registered.😮
Re-register!
Paul Cantrell
@rootfake @hey @Janne_O @mekkaokereke
Huh, what a weird coincidence that this ill-justified but deeply ingrained cultural belief happens to support policies that disproportionately disenfranchise Black people (and also helped kill a 90s plan to provide health insurance to everyone regardless of income, btw).
I guess things like this just happen completely by chance! Luck sure is a funny thing.
Szymon Nowicki
@Janne_O @mekkaokereke USA has no Citizen registry and no real personal ID. It’s historical and cultural.
rootfake
@hey @Janne_O @mekkaokereke yeah, about 30% of America believes that any sort of federal ID is the mark of the beast and will sell their soul to Satan. A very significant portion of the US believes in a literal spooky devil that goes around and does shit.
Janne Ojaniemi
@mekkaokereke I’m in Finland. Everyone is automatically registered to vote the moment they turn 18. As long as they are alive and citizens, they are never “deregistered”. When elections roll around, everyone is mailed information and instructions about the elections, as well as all needed paperwork in case people want to vote in advance.
mekka okereke :verified:
@paul @bhawthorne @janneoksanen
Racism. The only reason the US clings to this foolishness, is racism.
It's not that hard to organize Federal elections. The us having 50 states is not a real obstacle.
It's intentionally made more complicated for "states rights" until you ask the obvious question, "States' right to do what?" The answer is almost always, "To be way more racist to Black people than the federal government allows."
Paul-Vincent Roll (he/him)
@bhawthorne @janneoksanen @mekkaokereke Germany is made up of 16 states and we are also a federal government. Not the same as in the US but I don’t think your comparison with the EU is completely accurate.
I also get why it made sense historically but today it does seems strange to an outside perspective but I get it is hard / nearly impossible to change.
Brian Hawthorne
@paul @Janne_O @mekkaokereke The USA is 50 individual states with a federal government that has limited powers (the biggest perhaps being national sovereignty in foreign relations). In terms of things like voting, you need to compare the USA to the EU, not an individual nation-state like Germany.
Is this a smart way to handle voting? Absolutely not. But unless we rewrite our entire constitution with a constitutional convention or a bunch of constitutional amendments, that’s the system we have.
Paul-Vincent Roll (he/him)
@Janne_O @mekkaokereke same in Germany - it’s seems so strange to me how the US is doing it. We also vote on work free days so everyone has the chance to go.
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