please enlighten me politically
Since the upcoming US elections are The Topic on my friends list today, understandably, I have a question:
I'm still not entirely clear about your voting system.
Here, you have to inform the local authorities of your address (well, your parents tell them about your existence at birth and then you have to tell them about any changes of address when you move), and if you are over 18 and there are elections ahead, you will be sent a document that you have to bring to the voting booth, along with your passport or national id card (which we are required to own). If you already know you will not be in your home town on the day of the election, you can get a ballot that you can send in by mail.
So could somebody explain to me the process of registering to vote? I was surprised to see that you were able to register to vote even here, on German streets, if you were American and happened to walk out of Berlin's Sony center during the last couple of months. So obviously it's different from German bureaucratic routines.
Also, it has often been mentioned in the news that during the last elections, many US citizens were denied the right to vote. This seems strangely undemocratic to me, but I'm just an outsider - could somebody explain me who exactly is allowed to vote?
All the web sites I've found so far didn't really explain this to me, and I thought that with so many Americans on my friends list, it would be so much easier to ask here. Yay for the internet!
:)
I'm still not entirely clear about your voting system.
Here, you have to inform the local authorities of your address (well, your parents tell them about your existence at birth and then you have to tell them about any changes of address when you move), and if you are over 18 and there are elections ahead, you will be sent a document that you have to bring to the voting booth, along with your passport or national id card (which we are required to own). If you already know you will not be in your home town on the day of the election, you can get a ballot that you can send in by mail.
So could somebody explain to me the process of registering to vote? I was surprised to see that you were able to register to vote even here, on German streets, if you were American and happened to walk out of Berlin's Sony center during the last couple of months. So obviously it's different from German bureaucratic routines.
Also, it has often been mentioned in the news that during the last elections, many US citizens were denied the right to vote. This seems strangely undemocratic to me, but I'm just an outsider - could somebody explain me who exactly is allowed to vote?
All the web sites I've found so far didn't really explain this to me, and I thought that with so many Americans on my friends list, it would be so much easier to ask here. Yay for the internet!
:)