This isn't the whole picture. In some states, there's a proof of citizenship requirement in order to register to vote, and the most common form of photo ID (driver's license) is not sufficient for that purpose in most cases, because non-citizens can also hold it.

Problem is, for many people, they don't actually have any documentation to that effect. The most typical documents are passports and birth certificates. The former aren't free, and are otherwise only really useful when travelling in other countries, so there's little incentive to have one. The latter are often not available on hand, and you have to go to a completely different place (from where you register) to obtain yours; worse yet if you were born in a different state. It's usually not free, either.

http://www.demos.org/publication/how-do-proof-citizenship-la...

These "many people" must not be able to sustain employment either, since proof of eligibility to work (citizenship, or a visa that allows employment but wouldn't allow voting) is a requirement for any job.

Somehow, outrage over this situation only surfaces when it's time to send as much of a low-agency population as possible to the polls.

Proof of eligibility to work is one's Social Security card, normally. You don't need a birth certificate for that. Now, if you want to make the Social Security card a valid ID for the purposes of voting...

Somehow, the outrage about voter identity fraud - which empirically is so low that reported cases are in double digits across the entire country - is when it's election time, and politicians of a certain bent suddenly find out that poor and non-white people, for some mysterious reason, don't really support to cut top income bracket taxes even further.

So why is there a need for such a service?

Btw, in my country (Hungary) it's the simplest it can get: there's no preregistration, you just go with your ID and vote on the election day.

There isn't. Initiatives like this are usually attempts to get low-agency voters lacking any motivation and with minimal knowledge of candidates or issues to the polls.

Such people usually end up voting reliably for leftist candidates in the US, which is likely Sam's underlying goal.

(In many states in the US, it's actually easier than you describe - same-day registration with no ID requirement).

This is actually false. Most states require you to either mail-in your registration form (which requires access to a printer, knowledge of how to use the postal service/where to get stamps [which, let's be honest, a lot of young people have never had to do], and a state-issued photo ID [which costs money, and requires you to have time to go to a government building anyways to get one issued to you]) or go fill out a form in-person (which means you need the free time to do so [government buildings operate 9-5, which is, inconveniently, generally the same timeframe people are at work. And people with hourly jobs cough young people and low-income people cough would literally lose money taking time off to do this).

And that doesn't even touch on the fact that a lot of states make you show up in-person to vote (need a "legitimate" excuse for requesting absentee) and don't require employers to give you paid time-off to vote.

My god, do you really want someone who cannot figure out how to use the mail exerting political power over you? Are you aware that anyone who wants employment in the US must present proof of employment eligibility, which in almost all circumstances will be sufficient to verify eligibility to vote ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-9_(form) )? Have you not seen the booths & volunteers at just about any public event near election day registering people to vote, gratis?

Exactly how deep into the bottom of the barrel do you want to scrape before you admit that for any reasonably participatory member of society, voting is actually pretty easy?

> do you really want someone who cannot figure out how to use the mail exerting political power over you?

No. I want anyone (which includes people who don't know how to use the mail) to have the ability to exercise their Consti-fucking-tutional rights.

> Are you aware that anyone who wants employment in the US must present proof of employment eligibility, which in almost all circumstances will be sufficient to verify eligibility to vote

Did you know that there are plenty of situations in which someone could have documents that would allow them to be eligible for employment, but not to register to vote in their state? Such as people who recently moved from one to another, and haven't had time to get a new state ID/DL?

Do you also not understand how difficult it is to get any form of identification if you are, say, one of the millions of Americans who don't have a home? (And, before anyone tries to make the absurd argument that homeless people aren't online--most people [including homeless people, who, though they can't afford to spend thousands of dollars a year on a roof over their head, do generally recognize that it is more than worth it to pay less than a hundred dollars a month for a phone plan that will give them access to an unlimited source of information about anything--from open shelters to food drives] have phones capable of connecting to the Internet. Also public libraries) And did you also know that people without homes still have Constitutional rights?

> Exactly how deep into the bottom of the barrel do you want to scrape before you admit that for any reasonably participatory member of society, voting is actually pretty easy?

IDK yo--how deep of a hole are you going to dig yourself into before you admit that you're literally trying to tell someone that they're somehow doing their country a disservice by thinking about people less fortunate than themselves?

Voting isn't some fuzzy cost-free civic participation ritual, it is an exercise of power (or more accurately, a demonstration of power in lieu of its exercise). If you want to be ruled by someone who cannot figure out the mail, or cannot manage their affairs enough to sustain employment, can't get the same ID they use for any other institutional interaction they'd want to do, or doesn't speak the language of the people they're ruling, OK I guess, but a sane society does not. The less correspondence between what the voting pool desires and what those who pay for / enforce / submit to be regulated by their schemes do, the less reason there is for them to obey the results of the election.

You aren't upset about the technical nuances of proof-of-residency requirements for people who move the week before the election; you're literally making a moral claim to be ruled by the retarded as long as there's enough of them.

Nah, I'm just aware of the fact that there are people disenfranchised by the current registration process who deserve the option to voice their opinion just as much as anyone else.

The point is to disenfranchise them, because they should not exercise power.

If it's about "voicing their opinion", cool, they can say what they want, even in a non-election year. The thing about an "election", though, in the current regime, is that it imposes consequences on other people. If you just want civic ritual and a mascot to cheer for, turn on ESPN.

Also,

> Voting isn't some fuzzy cost-free civic participation ritual

Yes. It literally is.

Policies, decided by elections, have costs and consequences. Educate yourself.

Yes. And disenfranchised people need policies make the country better for them too.