1/ There are plenty of Euros smugly turning up their nose at America's "election chaos" who don't understand a number of key things about the USA. Almost all European countries (in fact, most countries) have mandatory government registration of all residents.

2/ Anytime you move, you must notify government authorities of your new address. Europeans, who have lived with strong centralized states for centuries, simply accept this and have a hard time imagining how it could be different. And it's easy to keep these records in small

3/ countries with small populations. So in Germany, when elections happen, the government sends a vote authorization notice to your address, which you then take to the polls along with your national ID card. This indeed makes for simple elections, since the state

4/ already knows who you are & where you live. In the United States, however, citizens are not obliged to register their address with the government as a general duty. There is no centralized register in the US of where every citizen lives. Americans are much more

5/ skeptical of gov't in this regard than Europeans are. They would never accept a duty to constantly inform the state where they live. Nor is there any national ID card in the US. The closest thing is a driver's license, but if you don't drive, it's quite possible you'll simply