system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: A government which doesn't automatically register its voters, is a government which doesnt want real representation and or is purposefully restricting voting.

I'm speaking from experience in the US. 

So I had a discussion with friends a while back and I couldn't think of any real, logical, and ethical reason for a government to not want to automatically register people to vote. Voter fraud doesn't happen on a dangerous level so worrying about that is negligible. We have the right to vote, which I feel is partially impeded by saying "hey you have to do X to certify paperwork to vote" (note I am OK with voter ID requirements within reason to verify identity). And finally, in order to best represent their constituents, you would want all eligible people to vote if you were truly in favor of a representative democracy which is what everyone claims.

Maybe something out there I don't know about. CMV!
gpt
The key issue is that the US doesn't register it's voters at all; the **States** do. People move from state to state, and the state in which they are born isn't necessarily the state in which they come of age and start voting in.

The reason we do this is because **everything you vote on is through the state**. Your congressman? Represents your district of the state. Your senator? Represents the state. Your vote for president? Used to reflect the electoral college vote of your state.

But the reality of this is that we need to establish residency in a given state, which is what all the paperwork is for. The general requirement is always;

1) Proof of citizenship.

2) Proof of identification.

3) Proof of residence.

Other than the issues involving the fact that IDs cost money, all of those are pretty trivial to obtain.

But functionally, the only way to make this process *remotely* possible is to require people to register themselves to vote in a given state. It's just not feasible to have the feds/states track down all of the unregistered voters and try to get them to register.

Edit: Also, protip to people registering now. **REGISTER ABSENTEE/EARLY VOTER IF AT ALL POSSIBLE**. Something like 35 of the 50 states (and every state west of the Mississippi except Missouri) allow either absentee or early voting without an excuse. Register for it when you register to vote, and the state will mail you your preregistration forms before each election (basically a postcard stating your intent to vote, and re-verifying your address), and then mail you your ballot. The total cost of this service is a stamp.

Quite literally, if you live in a state with no-excuse absentee ballot, you have no excuse not to vote.