We have all that and more. There are even groups that seek people out to teach them to vote. When you file a change of address with the post office, they send you a packet with all kinds of moving resources including how to re-register. In addition, a really quick Google search gives you all you need to know to register and vote. I don't understand why some people pretend the process is difficult. If people still aren't voting it's due to lack of interest, not because it's confusing or difficult.
55% of Americans have hourly jobs, most of which do not control their hours. There are many polling places, particularly in underserved communities, where it can take multiple hours to get to vote. Elections are nearly always held on workdays. So if you are a single parent working an hourly wage job from 8am to 6pm and the polls close at 7pm, would you vote? The voting process is difficult in America for some people and easy for others.
While I'm a big fan of vote by mail, it's not the only thing. Having early voting options would also help that hypothetical person as they can vote in person on a day they don't work.
The vast majority of states have no excuse absentee voting and/or early in-person voting options. In addition, employees are legally required to allow time off to vote, though in the overwhelming majority of states, the early voting options make this unnecessary.
If people want to participate, they have many options.
I've found that if you need to argue edge cases (single parent, hourly schedule that almost completely overlaps poll hours, no absentee, no early voting or mail-in, and an employer that violates law) as you have in your post, you do not have a compelling argument.
I don't get why there's a "process" at all. In Canada, when I change my address with the CRA (our version of the IRS), my voter registration gets updated automatically. Why is there a separate step in the US? I've also voted when my CRA address was out-of-date at the time, and this was fine too as long as I brought government-issued ID or a recent bill sent to my new address.
Like most things in the USA, voting is a local matter, not federal. It would be prohibitive for the post office to manage this across 50 states with differing rules.
States in the US have more atonomy than states in most of the rest of the world. So much so that it often doesn't make sense to compare national US figures to national figures in other nations - education being a good example - https://learn.uvm.edu/blog/blog-education/vermont-eighth-gra...
But the same applies to voting. The federalist system under which the US operates allows communities and localities the flexibility to operate in a manner consistent with local needs and values.
Why stop there? Perhaps government employees should go door to door and record my vote for me. Sending something in the mail is unreasonably difficult.
Because this would actually save the government and thus taxpayers 100+ million dollars a year?
A change of address is informing the government you moved and happens millions of times a year. Automating it doesn't just save citizens 10’s of millions of hours per year it also saves all the effort by all these different agencies when people communicate the same information to multiple agencies.
Would it though? The agencies are at different levels - local vs. federal. In addition, you are notifying the post office you have moved, not the government. Your federal notification is basically to the IRS, and not everyone pays income tax, so integration there would not work. Also, not all taxpayers are eligible to vote - another complication.
You have oversimplified the details of this sort of integration and conflated local vs federal institutions. The best way to do this change would be through your state's BMV/DMV, and many states already update your registration (or offer to) when you submit an address change there.
Registration and voting are easy and well documented in every state in which I've lived or researched.
Federal and state agencies communicate all the time. It’s much easier going from the federal level down to the state level and local level.
It’s not that it takes a lot of effort per person to update the DMV and voter records it’s dumb specifically because most government agencies are automatically updated. So essentially this is just wasting 330 million peoples time for absolutely zero benefit.
You're probably correct in many (or even most) cases, but I still believe that it's too difficult for some people, for two reasons:
1) Some people are under more stress than others, and are less able to summon the effort to vote. Admittedly, this does also include people in rather different circumstances, such as elderly homeowners who become unwell at election time (especially after the postal vote deadline).
2) Voting arrangements aren't uniform between countries (or even within one country), and travelling some distance to a polling station and then queuing to vote is a burden some voters might experience much more than others.
The vast majority of states offer a multitude of early voting or absentee/mail in voting options. As far as uniform regulations between counties, who cares? Each person is only supposed to vote once, and in a single county. Learn your local regulations (easy as this is well documented) and follow them.
Further, you won't ever come up with a system that is 100% inclusive, secure, reliable, and economical. That should never be the goal since it's not achievable or necessary. Covering 99% of cases is good enough.
