The voting registration barrier

In the United States, signing up to vote may be a awkward process and might represent the greatest hurdle to voter support. In some parts of America, it’s getting more awful. In contrast, other countries like Sweden and Germany automatically enroll qualified citizens onto their voting rolls. The United Kingdom and Australia effectively promote voter registration 

Since 2010, 22 states have passed laws requiring photo IDs or abridging early voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit open approach institute at New York University Law School that advances democracy and justice. (A few of the most questionable laws have been challenged in lawsuits or struck down by courts.)

In Georgia, a Republican council has affirmed several complicated voting requirements and purged more than 600,000 voters—nearly 10 percent of enrolled voters—for failing to participate in elections for more than three years. More than 130,000 of those voters had enlisted to vote for the first time in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president. Georgia’s so-called exact match law, enacted in 2017, requires that data on a registration application accurately match the data on government Social Security or driver’s license databases. An examination by the Associated Press found that 53,000 people—70 percent of them African-Americans—had their applications held up. The law moreover demonstrated burdensome for recently naturalized citizens, whose new status isn't always reflected in relevant governments databases.

The barrier of voting is reflected within the numbers: As it were around 64 percent of Americans who were qualified to vote were enrolled in 2016, according to the Census Bureau. In comparison, Canada in recent years enrolled 91 percent of their voting-age populace, while Slovakia enlisted 99 percent.

The government should make necessary move to remedy this situation by eliminating the cumbersome policy and encouraging people to vote.

Hoai Pham