Not everyone has ID either. There’s no mandatory national identification card. Social Security number might be the closest thing, but has no relationship with where you live

I think we should have more early in person voting. We do that where I live now, and it makes it much easier for people to make time to get to a polling place.

I also think more places should allow no-excuse absentee voting.

I don’t doubt that it works well in many places.

It would probably work well in many places in the US.

I was just thinking about places like Washing state that don’t have a state income tax, so combining taxation and voter registration would not be as straight forward as other places.

For better or worse the US constitution gives authority over most elections issues to the states, which means that we don’t have one national voting system. And because most states give big portions of how elections are run to their various countries, the voting experience can be very different in different parts of the the nation.

I assume that we can learn a lot from other places, but I’m not sure that everything that works for one country always scales to a population 5-10x larger.

Not a terrible idea.

It may work in a lot places, but may be more challenging in states that don’t have a state income tax. At least in the US, voter registration is handled by the State government, not the Federal government.

We would also need to account for eligible voters who are not paying taxes, (like college students, who may be living out of state to go to school, but I think would normally be expected to vote at “home”)

That’s great, and perhaps more of the country should.

Everywhere I have cast a ballot operates in person voting in addition to options for mail in ballots.

Washington state chose to address the logistics issues by removing polling stations. I would be curious how many people have problems when they move counties.

Depends on to which level of government you are talking about.

If I have a job I’m paying federal income tax. Most states also have an income tax, but not all.

If I own property, I’m probably paying some sort of real estate tax to the state xand/or county. If I’m renting, probably not.

If, for example, I’m out of work and move back home with my parents, there may not be a clear government record of where I live. Because of how large the US is, that could be a move of 1000+ miles from my last legal residence (would be for me anyway)

There is probably a valid argument about the managing the logistics of poling places to be made here.

Jurisdictions need to know how many ballots, poll workers, and polling locations they need to actually run the election.

Registration also helps to determine what proportion of the electorate turned out. This can give hints to how well information about the time and place of elections was advertised and whether polling places were open long enough or at enough locations to give people the opertunity to vote.

The way in which registration is handled in a given jurisdiction can absolutely be designed to suppress votes.