So you're telling me that, not only are federal elections decided by states rather than votes, but each individual state has their own set of laws to prevent you from appearing in the ballot? And it's somehow still fine because "you can just do a write-in vote"?
My favourite one is the Texan one, where you need to have gotten boatload of votes in order to appear on the ballot.
For a registered political party in a statewide election to gain ballot access, they must either: obtain 5% of the vote in any statewide election; or collect petition signatures equal to 1% of the total votes cast in the preceding election for governor, and must do so by January 2 of the year in which such statewide election is held. An independent candidate for any statewide office must collect petition signatures equal to 1% of the total votes cast for governor, and must do so beginning the day after primary elections are held and complete collection within 60 days thereafter (if runoff elections are held, the window is shortened to beginning the day after runoff elections are held and completed within 30 days thereafter). The petition signature cannot be from anyone who voted in either primary (including runoff), and voters cannot sign multiple petitions (they must sign a petition for one party or candidate only).
In Democratic America, you can only win elections if you've already won the elections.
It's kind of the opposite of most Socialist "bottom up" systems, where there are a series of elected councils that go from local areas all the way up to the top. Instead it's a kind of "top down" series of councils where the people at the top need to make sure every group under them are acceptable to them and them alone, the people be damned.
And any group deemed unacceptable are bureaucratically excised from the voting process (gerrymandering of districts, elections not being a mandatory holiday, legitimate voters being stricken from the voting rolls with an "oopsie, we wuz trying to delete the deceased voters" excuse, etc).
Bureaucratically at best. At worst it will be full on police raids and arrests. Everything they accuse the USSR of doing, they themselves have done far worse versions of it.
I'd think police raids and arrests are too public, too costly, and too much effort.
Having somebody show up to a polling place, wait in line for an hour, and be told that "oops! can't find you on the rolls" is much easier and cleaner. The voter will either fill out a provisional ballot or walk away (cause they gotta get back to work) and I'm pretty sure provisional ballots wind up getting counted so far after federal elections that its just kinda accepted that a provisional ballot is likely to never be counted.
Mail in ballots are handled differently in each state so its completely possible that you'll find multiple different instructions for if/when/how to get a mail in ballot and not know which one is the correct method for the current election. So that's a way to shave off a percentage of voters.
Didn't answer the postcard asking if you're still at the same address last listed on your voting records in a timely manner? Well, we aren't going to take the time to find out where you live now... deletes entry in voter roll database Hope you didn't just move next door or down the street or get a new PO Box or the postcard didn't get stuck to some other piece of mail and lost in the shuffle.
Haven't updated your photoID to have the correct "expiration date" even though the picture is of you, has your current physical address, and all the poll workers know you by name? Sorry, sir, we cannot allow you to vote today.
Closing a polling place is way cheaper than having police work overtime.
Ah, I was thinking of party organizations being prevented from participating in elections, not individuals or communities. You're right that the police wouldn't arrest people for voting for the wrong person, because it would just be a waste of resources.
Ah... okay, makes a bit more sense now. The COINTELPRO people never actually stop.