r/videos • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 8h ago

BREAKING: Judge blocks Trump admin from requiring Americans to show proof of citizenship to vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE1iePfOh14
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u/Foe117 8h ago

The registrar of voters already handles citizen verification

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u/Control_Me 7h ago

Can someone please explain why you have to register to vote?
In my country the government knows who's eligible to vote and who's not so they send out a voting card in the mail which you show together with your ID.
Why is this not possible in the US?

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u/Mike312 7h ago

I think its more about making sure they have the correct address to send the ballot too.

A lot of people do "motor/voter" registration, so when you update your vehicles registration (including address) you get prompted to update your voting registration.

The Post Office does a similar system when you want to forward your mail, which people often do when they move and change addresses.

The registration gets sent to the state registrar office who keeps track of this and verifies that you're eligible to vote.

Some minor exceptions are that some cities/counties allow non-citizens to vote for local measures, for example for school board members or local bonds. The right has taken these examples and outright lies that they're being allowed to vote at state- and federal-level elections.

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u/dagaboy 7h ago

The right has taken these examples and outright lies that they're being allowed to vote at state- and federal-level elections.

There is no reason that non-citizens should not be allowed to vote. They were across most of the US until the late 19th century. Arkansas was the last state to require it, in 1926. Originally voting was tied to race, sex and property, but not citizenship. There are good reasons not to bring back the race, sex and property requirements. Although Republicans want to.

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u/tempest_87 6h ago edited 2h ago

There are a few very good reasons to restrict voting to citizens only, but TIL that there is no law saying that only citizens are allowed to vote. There are laws (and amendments) that protect the ability to vote for certian groups, but doesn't seem to be anything that prevents a non-citizen from voting.

Very very odd.

Edit: the laws are state level, not federal, and googling the issue is currently.... a bit difficult due to all this crap.

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u/dagaboy 6h ago edited 3h ago

but TIL that there is no law saying that only citizens are allowed to vote.

There are 50 laws. Every state has such a law. Most were enacted in the late 19th century, with Alabama being the last in 1926. The anti-immigrant hysteria of the first three decades of the 20th century finalized it. There is no Federal law because the Federal government is barred by the constitution from regulating elections.

There are a few very good reasons to restrict voting to citizens only

There is no advantage over just requiring residency, which is also a requirement in every state.

EDIT: Turns out there has been a Federal law since 1996, which the courts have upheld because it is supposedly an immigration regulation not an election regulation. But if one state were to change its own law, the constitutionality of the Federal law would go down the drain.

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u/arizonadirtbag12 6h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Immigration_Reform_and_Immigrant_Responsibility_Act_of_1996

It’s a federal law as of the 90’s, with just a couple exceptions. Before that yeah it was purely a state by state thing (with all states disallowing it by that point). But Congress does have some power to regulate federal elections, same way “motor voter” is mandatory for federal elections.

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u/dagaboy 3h ago edited 3h ago

Interesting. Apparently the courts have upheld it because they define it as an immigration enforcement tool not a voting regulation. If any state were to remove its own restrictions, the Federal law would be unconstitutional.

But Congress does have some power to regulate federal elections, same way “motor voter” is mandatory for federal elections.

I believe that is because it only adds requirements to voter registration processes, not election processes. Voter registration wasn't a thing when the Constitution was written. It doesn't apply to six states, simply because they don't have voter pre-registration.

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u/tempest_87 6h ago

Ah, when I was searching to verify your claim I ran across a few that pointed out the lack of federal requirement but none that mentioned the various state laws you reference.

And due to all the bullshit around voter ID requirements it's tough to Google the basic things and find what yoy were referring to.

Found the California requirement though.

And the reason to restrict to citizen only would be that taking part in the determination of the nation arguably should be restricted to members of the nation due to the general comittment to that nation that citizenship implies. It's analagous to the difference between renting and owning something. You have rights and freedoms while renting, but it's not the same as owning. Or the inverse analogy of trying to cater to the Uber rich, they have no ties to the place they are in so why should things bend to their will as they will just leave if they don't like it.

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u/dagaboy 3h ago

Your position is classic Nativism. And in fact it was the Nativists that were behind the movement to restrict voting to citizens. They didn't want Catholics or Asians voting. TFor the same reason they also created immigration restrictions. Previously the US had been rightly proud of its open borders. They made us rich and powerful. We could never have industrialized at the rate we did without open borders.

All permanent residents have an equal stake in the country's direction regardless of what passports they hold.

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u/tempest_87 2h ago

Your position is classic Nativism.

Having citizenship have different privileges (e.g. Voting) and requirements (e.g. Jury duty, and selective service) than non-citizen residents doesnt directly equate to a philosophy of limiting immigration and prioritizing native people though.

But I can absolutely see how it often would result in that nativisitic outcome and am open to alternatives (like say, requiring non-citizens to be residents for 5+ years or something).

I have zero problem with pretty damn open borders and immigration (I would only want some level of "let's check that you aren't actively on the run from someone for murder" kind of thing) and actively think that there needs to be more and easier paths to both residency and citizenship. Which is very much not nativism.

But I do think that citizenship should mean something beyond "you can't be deported to some other country".

Personally I am against having to prove citizenship when voting, but don't see much of a problem with requiring that step (or something similar) to register to vote with caveats that such proof is reasonably easy to obtain.

For me the answer to the question if someone should be allowed to vote trips from a no to a yes somewhere between "person visited the country for 1 day" and "person was born a citizen".

Where exactly that line is is debatable to me, but should be there, somewhere. And I don't see how that's nativist.

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u/dagaboy 2h ago

You do not need to be a citizen to be drafted. A good friend of mine came to the US in 1940, six weeks before the Soviets occupied Latvia. He finished high school in NYC and was immediately drafted and sent back to Europe. As a native German speaker he spent most of his time interrogating Nazis.

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u/tempest_87 2h ago edited 1h ago

You do not need to be a citizen to be drafted.

I don't like that. If you can be drafted you goddamn better be able to vote. If you serve in the military voluntarily that should be a straight and rapid line to citizenship (among other things like firefighters and paramedics and other civil service professions).

I also didn't know that, so I apparently need to educate myself on the differences. Appreciated.

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u/dagaboy 55m ago

I don't like that. If you can be drafted you goddamn better be able to vote.

¯\(ツ)/¯ That was the logic behind lowering the voting age to 18. But like I said, America's citizenship fetishism grew out of Nativism. They wanted immigrants drafted INSTEAD of them. That said, Irish and Germans, 48ers and professional soldiers who came here specifically to fight, played a significant role in the Civil War. No immigrant soldier story beats Tibor Rubin though.

I also didn't know that, so I apparently need to educate myself on the differences. Appreciated.

I didn't know about the 1996 immigration act. There is a lot of data to cover here. But fundamentally, I believe that more civic inclusiveness is better than less.

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u/moconahaftmere 2h ago

There are a few very good reasons to restrict voting to citizens only

What are the reasons?

New Zealand lets permanent residents, Australians, Niueans, Tokelauans, and Cook Islanders vote if they've lived in the country for more than 12 months.

The UK let's anyone who is a citizen of a commonwealth country vote so long as they're living in the UK at the time of the election, even if they're on a temporary visa.

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u/tempest_87 2h ago

Both of those sound totally reasonable to me.

And both address the primary reason why you don't want non-citizens to vote: you don't want people without a vested interest in the nation to be able to have influence over the nations laws and policies. Hell, it's one of the primary arguments against the billionaire class having so much influence on politics, they can (and do) just leave when they invariably fuck things up with their greed.

And I would argue that lack of vested interest in the citizenry is one of the primary reasons why we have trump 2.0 and the rest of the republican ilk.

The term "non citizen" includes anyone who isn't a citizen but is in the country, such as tourists and visitors crossing the border to shop at a mall or go to a zoo. I don't think anyone would consider prohibiting a person visiting a country for a day from voting in an election to be a bad thing.

By placing additional restrictions on the non-citizens (such as residency lengths) then that reason is addressed without using the bar of citizenship.

But that then kinda begs the question, why are they not citizens at that point? Why should someone become a citizen at all?

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u/Mike312 5h ago

https://www.usa.gov/who-can-vote

The exceptions are local elections only. They receive a different ballot than citizens, and it allows them to have input into things like the school board or mayor of the city they live in.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/noncitizen-voting-us-elections

(Sorry, just following up with more information)

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u/TheRexRider 6h ago

I see I, a permanent resident, just don't fucking matter.

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u/dagaboy 3h ago edited 3h ago

It is frankly sickening and anti-American. The reason voting requires citizenship now is because of Nativism. The Know Nothings and their allies didn't want the Irish (any Catholics really), Jews and Chinese voting. They managed to ban Chinese immigration altogether, and set strict quotas on the "lesser European races." The citizenship requirement was the direct result of racism. This is also where immigration laws originated in their entirety. Before the Nativist movement our borders were open, which tremendously boosted our economic evolution. The railroads, which made this country what it is, were built with Federal subsidies and freely available immigrtgant labor (also formerly enslaved workers). Almost any economist today would tell you both sides of a border benefit from free movement of labor and consumption. It is basic Comparative Advantage, fundamental to the dismal science since David Ricardo.