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Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

nytimes.com

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Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#51

Post by mschuster91 »

In Germany we do not have this problem (neither voter suppression nor voter fraud), for a multitude of reasons:

1) everyone has a government-provided ID document: a passport, for German nationals the ID card Personalausweis also works, and for EU nationals (who can vote in municipal and EU elections) their country's ID document

2) the legal requirement to register at the city/region office ("Meldebehörde") where you live, and you have to prove this with a copy of your rent contract or property deed

3) everyone getting a document ("Wahlschein") by mail a couple of weeks prior to election date. If you don't get one but should have gotten, you can contact the election authority to investigate, and if you lose/misplace it you can easily look up where your voting place is, go there and have them locate you on the voter roll.

4) if any piece of official mail goes returned by the post as "undeliverable", the Meldebehörde will investigate and de-register you (thus also removing you from the voter roll)

The only real vote fraud in the last years was from a politician who had seasonal workers register at a company and apply for mail-voting, but that's it.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#52

Post by scrooched_moose »

maxerickson wrote: post #19
not_a_cop75 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard is it really for a voter to reregister? You guys are making it sound like it they're taking away driver's licenses or something. All you have to do is hit the website. If you don't have internet access hit a library.

Why do people have to register to vote at all? The state has a sort of pretty solid idea of where they live...

Not really. You can easily move without informing the new state.

Millions of college students do it every year. The last move I made was in September so I hadn't changed licenses or filed income taxes yet, so they had no awareness of me yet.

Luckily I'm in a fairly permissive state and was able to register with a couple utility bills without any hassle.

Some sort of voter registration is a necessity when you can move 3000 miles in a weekend. Unfortunately it's often used to disenfranchise voters, but a significant subset of the population does not have up-to-date records. Registration is a way to fix that.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#54

Post by [deleted] »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #18
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't find out you need to re-register until it's too late.

Don't most places allow same day registration at the polls? Every state I've voted in does. Edit: ok, 2/5ths isn't most but it's still a lot. Chill with the down-votes, it was an honest question, not an attack on your ideology.

[deleted]

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#55

Post by GiorgioG »

Accujack wrote: post #45
spamizbad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is HN and you're probably young-ish: When you're older and you've set down roots the last time you updated your voter registration was probably a few decades ago. Chances are your polling place hasn't likely changed either. So you know when elections come, you go to your usual polling place, give your name, get your ballet and "pull the lever" so to speak. You're not thinking "Oh I better double-check my…

>The US is strange: It will wring its hands over low voter turnout while also actively making it more difficult to vote. Hint: the people wringing their hands and the people making it more difficult to vote are not the same groups.

> It will wring its hands over low voter turnout while also actively making it more difficult to vote.

The republicans generally would prefer that lower-income folks don't vote because they generally vote for democrats, so of course they would like to see voter turn-out to be low.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#56

Post by homonculus1 »

dd36 wrote: post #17
wbronitsky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think instead of framing this issue as "how easy would it be to re-register" we could instead ask "why should anyone have to register to vote at all?" In the US, voting is a right, which is something that cannot and should not be taken away. Invalidating voting registration, especially in a targeted way, is deplorable.

That’s actually a good argument for registering guns. I have to register for my voting rights, you have to register for your gun rights.

As we see from this very article, the outcome of making people register for their rights is to deny them their rights. Don't race to the bottom, we'll all just end up... at the bottom.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#57

Post by wingspar »

maxerickson wrote: post #19
not_a_cop75 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard is it really for a voter to reregister? You guys are making it sound like it they're taking away driver's licenses or something. All you have to do is hit the website. If you don't have internet access hit a library.

Why do people have to register to vote at all? The state has a sort of pretty solid idea of where they live...

One purpose for registration is to lock the person into voting in a particular district.

Why? Ballots can and do vary by district. Different districts have different representatives (on both state, county and town/city level)

Different districts have votes for different issues (state amendments, county amendments, town/city amendments)

Different districts have different local offices (county officers vs city/town officers)

Registering also locks a person into voting only once.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#58

Post by jorblumesea »

biomcgary wrote: post #35

According to the article, moderate Republicans in Ohio insisted on transparency for purging voter rolls. They sent out the proposed list to various voter advocacy groups across the political spectrum, which reviewed the proposed changes and flagged mistakes. 80% were purged correctly. 20% were not. Rather than condemning Ohio, they should be praised for bringing transparency to the process (as long as the mistakes ar…

What? So, you're willing to engage in unethical activity, with a modicum of lip service to transparency? The entire idea of purging voters rolls is antithetical to voting freedoms and transparency.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#59

Post by _jal »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #40
spamizbad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is HN and you're probably young-ish: When you're older and you've set down roots the last time you updated your voter registration was probably a few decades ago. Chances are your polling place hasn't likely changed either. So you know when elections come, you go to your usual polling place, give your name, get your ballet and "pull the lever" so to speak. You're not thinking "Oh I better double-check my…

I update my voter registration sometimes twice a year to match the party I most like at the time, It's always been online - easy peasy. I expect to get downvoted to hell but I also don't get why showing an ID to vote is such a big deal. After all, I have to look up the numbers in my drivers license to vote. Also, how is it hard to vote? Absentee ballots are totally easy to get. If I was blind, I might have to plan ah…

> I update my voter registration sometimes twice a year

Well, almost nobody else behaves that way.

As someone else who does things that are not common, my advice would be to recognize that you are way off the curve and don't universalize your experience.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#60

Post by dragontamer »

jcims wrote: post #29
josefresco wrote: post #3

"And voting rights groups found an unexplained tranche — around 20,000 people — who had been marked to be purged because of inactivity in future election cycles, but were actually active voters in previous Ohio elections. These voters were in Franklin County, a Democratic stronghold in the state." Aaaand there it is.

Just a data point as I can’t read the article right now. Franklin County is the largest county in the state and represents 11% of the population.

A policy that harms city-voting more than rural will innately benefit Republicans.
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