I just have a quick question for our friends living in countries other than the US.
Do you have to prove citizenship in order to register to vote in national elections?
This makes perfect sense to me, and apparently about 80% of this country, but not to 50% of our elected officials.

Yes both in the countries I have stayed in, Indonesia and Australia you have to prove citizenship and address to vote.

Pumpkinslinger wrote:

I just have a quick question for our friends living in countries other than the US. Do you have to prove citizenship in order to register to vote in national elections? This makes perfect sense to me, and apparently about 80% of this country, but not to 50% of our elected officials.

Commonsense says that voters must be identified, but given the size of the US population, I’m not sure how this can be achieved with voters definitively identified. Another problem the US has with elections is, it is not compulsory to vote, making it hard to identify who has actually voted. The mere fact that 50% of elected officials oppose voters being identified says it all to me.

Without proper, exacting identification, it leaves the election results open to dishonesty, with chosen candidates ‘padding’ their results with bogus votes. I’ve heard that it was not uncommon for cemeteries being visited, names collected and these names used to vote. Rumour has it that the Dems were very good at doing this.

Here it's the opposite: we can vote "blanco" but we have to go unless it's physically not possible, but then we can authorize someone else to vote for you or get some prove of your medical doctor or your employer (saying you're not in the country), ...
the invitation letter will get a stamp when you're registered that you have entered cubicle and at least have act as if you've voted...
when you don't go to the voting you can get a penalty (and it's not a few euro, but a few hundreds of euros!), so you keep that stamped letter a while as prove.

And the strange thing is that most of the time you get a government you didn't vote for...

Aloysius wrote:

Here it's the opposite: we can vote "blanco" but we have to go unless it's physically not possible, but then we can authorize someone else to vote for you or get some prove of your medical doctor or your employer (saying you're not in the country), ... the invitation letter will get a stamp when you're registered that you have entered cubicle and at least have act as if you've voted... when you don't go to the voting you can get a penalty (and it's not a few euro, but a few hundreds of euros!), so you keep that stamped letter a while as prove. And the strange thing is that most of the time you get a government you didn't vote for...

It’s the same here in Australia for all elections…local Council, State Government, Federal Government, Referendums and anything else they deem compulsory, all you have to do is show up, get your name marked off the roll and go to the voting booth. My brother hates voting, so he gets his name marked off, then draws disgusting pictures (p3nises etc) on the voting card and writes disgusting comments against certain candidates, puts the voting card in the box, then leaves.

You don’t attend…then you better have a damn fine reason and proof. Like Belgium, the fine for non-voting is pretty big.

Vince wrote:

The mere fact that 50% of elected officials oppose voters being identified says it all to me.

Vince, remember that the 50% of politicians who oppose the "Save Act" are the same party that allowed the country to be flooded with illegals and want to allow them to vote, figuring that they'll vote for the people who let them enter. Various polls say that 80+% of Americans support it, including 70% of Democrats.

I don't want this to turn into a political debate. I was just wondering about voter registration in other countries.

Pumpkinslinger wrote:

Vince wrote: The mere fact that 50% of elected officials oppose voters being identified says it all to me. Vince, remember that the 50% of politicians who oppose the "Save Act" are the same party that allowed the country to be flooded with illegals and want to allow them to vote, figuring that they'll vote for the people who let them enter. Various polls say that 80+% of Americans support it, including 70% of Democrats. I don't want this to turn into a political debate. I was just wondering about voter registration in other countries.

Fair call mate…I don’t really understand the politics in your part of the world anyway.

I still stand by my comment that voters must be identified correctly (as they are in Australia) and voting must be compulsory…even though we get garbage politicians elected as we have now. Ask Trump if he likes our PM Albanese or our last Ambassador to the US (Rudd).

Individuals that don’t vote have got no right to complain about the Government you end up with being elected.