Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration said starting Tuesday it is making it easier for someone to register to vote when they are getting or renewing a driver’s license in the state.

Under the new format, prompts on the computer screens in driver’s license centers will take the user to a template to register to vote. That leaves it up to them to choose not to register. Previously, prompts on the computer screen first asked the user whether they wanted to register to vote.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Thing is, the government doesn’t know where you are. You get a social security number when you’re born, and the hospital provides a birth certificate, and everything else is voluntary. You can get a driver’s license, establish credit with a bank, but if you just leave your house and go to some other state, you don’t really have to tell anyone.

      Living in one place entitles you to vote for local politicians, and registering to vote prevents you from voting more than once.

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        I understand that. Buts it’s a weird American aberration born out of your worrying frontier fetishism. Having a functioning central public administration would solve *a lot * of your problems.

        Y’all need records, yo.

        • Kichae@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Or just be less paranoid. You have to register to vote in Canada, but you can do it automatically when filing your taxes, or at the polls with your government ID, OR at the polls with a piece of mail and an already registered voter to vouch for you. They just write your name and address down to forward to the federal or provincial elections agency, nave your voucher sign a form, and then give you a ballot.

        • snooggums@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          But muh state’s rights!

          A centralized one that makes it easy to update would be awesome, but would require a constitutional amendment since it is currently up to each individual state.

      • rhombus@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        This is only true if you exclusively work under the table or commit tax fraud, otherwise you inform the government where you live and work every year when filing your taxes. They may not know if you move between tax seasons, but they’ll know eventually.

    • timicin@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      it’s a very effective form of voter suppression, so yes, it’s very american; gotta make sure only the right kind of people can voter after all.

  • hogunner@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Without even looking it up I’m willing to bet everything that I own that he is a Democrat. Ask me how I know.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Josh Shapiro’s administration said starting Tuesday it is making it easier for someone to register to vote when they are getting or renewing a driver’s license in the state.

    Under the new format, prompts on the computer screens in driver’s license centers will take the user to a template to register to vote.

    The Shapiro administration said it does not need legislation or regulation to make the change at driver’s license centers.

    Researchers from the Public Policy Institute of California, the University of Southern California and the University of California-Berkeley concluded in a 2021 study that automatic voter registration increased registration by several percentage points in states where it was in effect, and boosted the number of people actually voting by more than 1%.

    Shapiro, then the attorney general of Pennsylvania, fought Trump’s efforts to reverse his loss in the state that year.

    Trump heavily backed Doug Mastriano, a 2020 election denier who organized buses to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, against Shapiro in the governor’s race in 2022.


    The original article contains 369 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 53%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!