You're not missing anything.

> so alien to my European brain

Voter registration is mandatory in France.

You think there’s no voter fraud in Europe?

You aren't missing anything, it's almost all about voter suppression, and a lot of that is about racism.

And it isn't even a secret. You can find quotes where politicians talk openly about it. I'm trying to be neutral here but when I say "politicians" I mean within one party.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/when...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/inside-house-republicans-pl...

https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/historyvotersuppression/web...

If someone can't bother registering to vote, they shouldn't vote. Only active citizens, who are wiling to put some effort in should vote, voting is not an activity that aught to be taken lightly.

Do you live in one of the European countries that has a registry of all citizens? At some point, the government needs to have some notion of who you are. The US has no central registry, so it gets pushed out to the periphery like this.

The model was conceived when there were wide plain, few people and traveling messaging results took days to weeks. And it was never adapted. I'd say most of European voting was with shorter distances, higher population density and newer technology.

It's the price paid for not having a general population register. You only need to enroll to vote if you want to vote, and the voter registration is (theoretically) only for that purpose and won't be used for other purposes. Every government interaction in the anglosphere works this way; you always have to reprove your id and address from scratch.

It's a distinct blue/red state issue. Blue states go out of their way to register as many of their residents as possible and allow same day registration.

The red states, Republicans use it as a tool to reduce participation of urban, non-white voters and reduce overall participation. They don't consider systematic, passive voter suppression techniques to be voter fraud.

> my European brain

Do you speak for all of Europe? Or do different countries in Europe have different approaches to voting? What you are missing is that this is similar to the US in that we have fifty different States each of which handle voting their own way. There is no singular answer at the federal level, though some people are trying to push in that direction.

There’s a rich history of voter suppression tactics in the US. Naïve conservatives refuse to see the straight line from poll taxes to voter registration deadlines. Anti-democratic conservatives take great joy in continuing the racist and classist traditions of their forefathers (both by blood and by tradition), and you’ll find such characters packed in the state governments in the South.

American Democracy started from a place of very strict voter requirements (white, male, adult, landowner) and is trending towards fewer voter requirements.

The registration process is mostly a legacy system to ensure only qualified individuals vote, left over from a time when the bar was much higher.

Pretty sure countries in Europe have voter registration too? Here's a page to register in France. [1]

The US was organized around a very limited federal government (this has changed over time). Each state is responsible for elections within the state. There's no exact national registry of citizens, although Social Security keeps a de facto registry as most citizens are enumerated by that administration and their records include citizenship indication. Strictly speaking, registration with social security is not mandatory, it is required for employees and a child must be registered to qualify for tax credits and it makes administrative tasks simpler.

Within each state, voting is typically administered by county (or similar level) offices; although I think many states have a state wide process to register.

A given voter will vote for many positions (and often some propositions), and electoral boundaries for positions don't necessarily align with anything else or each other. So there's a lot of complexity there.

The residence address of the voter is the important thing that decides which elections they can participate in, but since there is no real registry of residence (de facto or de jure), it needs to be collected seperately.

[1] https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/R1...

It punishes large counties, who'll have to pay overtime or hire new employees to help with the sudden backlog, or risk leaving people in the county disenfranchised. Punishing cities is part of the Republican agenda. Whether this one is incompetence (seems likely) or intentional manipulation remains to be seen. But, it is certainly convenient for Republicans that it is most costly, and most likely disruptive, for the cities that don't vote for Republicans. Somehow, Travis and Harris counties, in particular, are always having to jump through extra hoops to make sure their voters are able to vote. And, sometimes, the things they'd like to do to make it easier to vote are outlawed by the state (e.g. Harris county, specifically, has limits on the number of ballot drop-off locations they can have, imposed by the state).

And, what would have happened had journalist not discovered it a couple of months before the election? Would those registrations have just been lost until after?

Maybe that's because it is, maybe most people the current Texas leadership want to get votes from are not the ones that newly first register in Texas?

> The whole process feels like it’s designed to discourage people from voting.

It is, with specific emphasis on discouraging people in cities from voting. The state has done all sorts of fuckery to limit the ability of people in urban centers from having any voice in government. Some of the most incredible gerrymanders in the country, limits on voting locations and times imposed specifically on large cities, many small frictions to make voting more time-consuming and expensive.

It's why they can get away with naked corruption and bumbling incompetence and still retain a firm hold on power. Well, that, and copious oil billionaire money flowing to Texas elections.

When corporations use similar tactics we call them “dark patterns”. Unfortunately, the only weapon we the people have against these tactics is regulation. But when it’s the government doing these things… anyway. Hope the Democratic Party has learned that conservative leadership won’t evolve their platform, they’ll reject democracy.