My vote is totally irrelevant. I've moved 3 states in my life. Never once has it mattered because of how we vote. My state will be blue. My congressional district will be blue. I might as well do nothing.
Thankfully I'm a dual citizen with Canada so my vote has mattered there at least part of the time.
So this isn't anything special.
I'd say the EU is in a far more democratic spot by this metric than the US.
For the first, 100% of citizens cannot vote for the federal government representatives (children, most felons, etc do not have the franchise), and about 1/2 of citizens who are eligible to vote do not. The vast majority of adult citizens can vote.
For the electoral college, that only applies to the POTUS. I agree that the electoral college is deeply flawed. But both senators and congressmen are elected directly. They are the ones who make the laws. The executive branch just enforces and executes those laws. The responsibility for the many vague laws that hand over power to the executive is on congress.
IMO, to say "85% of Americans pay taxes to a federal government that they cannot vote for" is misleading at best.
We have 3 parts of the federal government we can vote for: executive, senate, and house. Yet, the vast majority of people reading this have never cast a vote that mattered in any of those. I certainly have not.
Most states are not competitive when it comes to electoral votes. It doesn't matter if 100% of MA or CA comes out. Whoever is blue-colored will win those EVs. Beyond that, any other vote is worthless and won't change the outcome.
Most states are not competitive when it comes to the senate. Who wins in most races is predetermined by their color affiliation.
Most house races are the same. Many house races don't even have any meaningful opposition because everyone knows who will win.
It's even worse at the local level. Depending on the type of position 60-90% of races are uncontested.
Of course people don't turn out. For 85+% of people it doesn't matter.
> about 1/2 of citizens who are eligible to vote do not
I'm part that majority. No matter how many of me show up even if it was an unlimited number of people, there is literally nothing my vote can do to change the outcome. So yeah. Why waste the time pretending we're in a democracy?
We're in a rule by a tiny minority.
Given the dramatic amount of in EU migration that is not too surprising.
93% of respondents are correct in that you become an EU citizen automatically by living in an EU country, and 87% "feel" that they're EU citizens.
That could just as easily be an argument against democracy. The Gulf monarchies have large numbers of non-citizen guest workers, in the case of the UAE over 80% of the population, but they don't have any of the problems western countries have with migrants, because migrants have no political power and aren't eligible for welfare.
> The Gulf monarchies have large numbers of non-citizen guest workers, in the case of the UAE over 80% of the population, but they don't have any of the problems western countries have with migrants, because migrants have no political power and aren't eligible for welfare.
Sometimes pro-immigration economic liberals cite the Gulf experience with immigrants as an argument for why western democracies should have open borders or at least much more liberalized immigration policy. The pro-open-borders libertarian economist Bryan Caplan has made this specific argument for instance. Setting aside the fact that these countries are not democracies even for their own citizens, if 80% of the human beings physically resident within your borders are non-citizen guest workers, I would be worried about the possibility of formally-illegal violent uprising.
Putting that aside even if you do accept the premise that people working and living in your country are a risk rather than an opportunity, it's a poor argument in favor of something that's necessitated by demographic change in the West (and places like Japan).
Immigrants as a broader category here in the US make up around 20% of our total tax revenue.
And yet, the right-wing-ish coalition government is making hostile anti-immigration policies and increasing citizenship requirements - which I can't vote against.
Honestly, it’s an incredibly privileged thing to be able to do and I think of it every time I vote. I am an ardent supporter of free movement of people. I genuinely think that voting in GEs should be restricted to citizens of the country (and that my exemption is unfair). Without that distinction, what is the difference between a long term resident and a citizen? Why would you ever go through it. The _citizens_ should vote for what country they want, and the residents (me) should decide do we still want to be a part of that world.
My point is, if you're not willing to go through the naturalisation process when you're eligible, what's the problem?
If somebody doesn’t care enough to prove they know the basics of the language and legal system in the country… Maybe they shouldn’t have voting privilege either?
> you don’t think they’re committed at that point and should have a right to vote in the society they are contributing to
Honestly - no, I don’t. I think that voting in a GE is a huge privilege, and it should require an explicit declaration and an acceptance from the country they are part of.
It's even applicable for taxes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage
Yes, you're not married. But you're not single either.
You do have to swear allegiance to the monarchy in the UK, which some people may feel more or less positively about.
You fall into an edge case. Irish citizens have special status in the UK as a result of the countries' shared history. In this particular case the biggest difference is that you can't get a UK passport as an Irish citizen.
> in this particular case the biggest difference is that you can’t get a UK passport as an Irish citizen.
Sure, but I’ve also been here long enough to naturalise - it’s a decision for me, not something I need to do anything more to be eligible for.
The UKs history is murky and I think that the rules reflect that. I don’t think a rug pull is a good idea for existing people. Despite what I said above, having that right removed from me would feel like a huge blow, as it would be a marks change on how the relationship between Ireland and the UK is.
It's not an impossible challenge to overcome and compared to what 99% of the world's population needs to go through for the same privilege it's a piece of cake for the author to get done, but it's not just a matter of paperwork.
You may have missed this, because it is buried under a ton of verbiage that makes this tiny number of nonvoters like a social problem. So when this person says:
> [D]espite strong attachment to the European Union, mobile Europeans are less likely to participate in European elections [...] because each member state has different procedures, deadlines, and often inadequate public information.
They are obscuring the fact that the only rules that they need to know are Slovakian rules, and that they don't bother.
> I also repeatedly missed the deadlines to apply for postal votes in Slovakia.
Ideal person not to be voting. Really thinks that wealthy Slovaks living in the Netherlands have something important to say about Brexit (populism bad!), and that people who are too lazy to vote in European elections can lecture anyone else about the utility of the EU. Such a coddled class.
I think that Brexit illustrates exactly why you need to be a citizen for elections of that type. It seems unfair to let the large number of other European living in the UK have influence on whether or not the UK was to stay, as they are still guests. Same for government election, you are a valued and wanted guest, but you are still a guest.
The complaint, to me, has some value, because the EU countries are making it fairly hard to chance citizenship. On the one hand, they are also completely free to move, if they don't want to pay taxes to a government they can't vote for, on the other, ensuring that these people has the option to say: I'm planning on staying for a very long time, I provide value, I want to be able to vote, should be a priority.
If we assume the best, there should not be a problem in letting people vote for the government in the country their reside, if we assume the worst, it's a massive problem.
A EU citizen living in the UK for long enough, and with a plan to stay, should have a say on the decisions of that country.
Yes, there is citizenship, but rules are all different and are made every more complicated as we speak (I like in Sweden, where the case is clear).
On the other hand I would be quite happy to give up my _voting rights_ in the original country in exchange for local ones. I do understand that allowing double voting would give mobile citizens an excessive amount of weight, but letting each individual choose would seems quite reasonable to me.
And in any case, might the EU live long and prosper.
https://bestcitizens.com/2024/11/08/list-of-eu-countries-pro...
I am an EU citizen, living in another EU country. I managed to vote in the most recent general elections at home. When it comes to the EU elections, I even have a choice: I could vote for MEPs in my country of residence or in my country of citizenship. If voting in my new country was really important to me, I could naturalize and vote in a general elections in my new country.
A requirement to be registered at a new place of residence isn't that unusual. When one moves to another state within the United States, one has to register to vote in that state. Many states require that you live in the state a certain period of time before being able to register to vote, so if you move a week before the election, you are out of luck in your new state. You could be better off voting by an absentee ballot in your old state before you move.
EU citizens generally can vote in municipal elections where they live. Cities and towns also provide services that are supported by tax payers.
The UK local elections I had to register for, I think I got a letter asking if I want to vote and had to fill in a form and every so often I need to go online and tell them nothing changed in my circumstances.
To vote for my original country, things were a bit tricky when I moved over, mostly because they were not prepared to accommodate that many people in diaspora wanting to vote (check the Romanian Elections in diaspora 2014 and 2015). Since then, we have 3 days to vote in person and we can also register to vote by mail.
I like the gist of it but not sure how one would follow from the other. Populist tendencies can also manifest through voting preferences, can't they? Brexit happened via a voting preference. Just because mobile EU citizens vote, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll vote for who the author expect they'll vote for. So they are mostly orthogonal concerns in a way.
it turns out, the ones who acted upon that are getting punished
He went to The Netherlands where it's extremely easy for migrants to integrate: Not only is English widely spoken, but Dutch is also one of the easiest languages to read if you know English and/or German.
So it's unsurprising that he felt he understood enough of politics that he wanted to vote there.
'voting' is a humiliation ritual that allows politicians to offload the moral burden of their incompetent governorship onto the powerless citizenry, via the insidious veneer of candidate optionality.
the constitution should forbid any politician, or statesperson, to hold a 'popular vote', and subversively weasel out of their responsibilities in this manner.
statespersons should be selected by the current government, and if they screw up, they should have absolutely zero leeway to say "well you all voted for me!"
The voting pass handed to the author to vote on someone else's behalf clearly states the requirements. A Dutch passport, ID, or driver's license is required. Polling booths are run by volunteers and they have hard enough of a time already checking the validity of Dutch ID, adding 27 other forms of ID will only make it easier to bypass the electoral protections we have.
Schengen, the EU, and the EEA may have made working abroad exceptionally easy, but working abroad you're still a guest in another country. If you've lived somewhere long enough to forget to vote in your home country, maybe it's time to reevaluate what your home country really is.
Not sure about this one. For municipal elections in the Netherlands, you need to live in a particular municipal to vote. That means: even non-eu expats are eligible. I have had colleagues with UK, US and Turkish passports that voted (or could have voted) in Amsterdam for local representatives.
The example given wasn't about casting their own vote, though, but voting for someone else by proxy (volmacht). For that, you need to take someone else's voting pass, a copy of their ID (may be expired up to a certain amount of years), and a form of your own, valid, Dutch identification.
That last part is where it went wrong: they didn't have valid Dutch ID so the vote by proxy was rejected.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Reform_...
There are certainly countries where gaining citizenship is a challenge, but the Dutch terms for EU migrants the minimum requirements ("speaking the language somewhat fluently, having lived there legally for five years, filling out paperwork") aren't that difficult. Getting through the process takes effort, for sure, but it's not the challenge most people in the world will face (the "living in the country legally for five years" part, mostly; without student visas or special deals between your old government and the Dutch government, you're not likely to get a work visa as any random person on earth).
That said, there absolutely should be reasonable processes to allow you to vote in the country you live in. "Obtaining citizenship" sounds reasonable, but of course, not every country has reasonable way to obtain citizenship. The EU voting procedure sounds really onerous.
trueismywork•1h ago
FWIW: I am a non-EU migrant.
RandomLensman•59m ago