Discussion
When you register to vote in Oregon (and most other states) your name and address are made public. ANY ABUSER CAN LOOK UP YOUR ADDRESS.
Worse, each time you engage with the DMV or a few other systems, you're automatically registered to vote. Even if you opt-out they will repeatedly add you back in.
This is honestly one of the most grotesque paragraphs in the entire legal system.
If you don't want to vomit and burn down government buildings after reading it you truly don't understand a single fucking thing.
Again, a survivor has to have gone to the state to complain about their abuser or stalker, they have to file charges etc, and then -- after a pile of work on this front -- some random election worker gets to pour through your paperwork and hand down judgement on whether they think you should live.
And, of course, putting aside that in addition to the random elections worker survivors need beat cops and judges to side with them first, THIS DOES NOTHING TO PROTECT ANTIFASCISTS OR MYRIAD OTHER PEOPLE WITH LETHAL ENEMIES. A journalist who documented nazis? The state will hand your address to them
Now there's an instinct to see this as liberals prohibiting survivors, antifascists, journalists, women online, etc from casting a vote. But it's worse. Because, as mentioned, the entire system is designed to get you registered to vote against your will. THEY'RE MURDERING SURVIVORS TO GET MORE VOTES
Folks will make the usual points today about how casting a vote is deontologically evil because it's complicity in legitimizing and directing the state's violence. Others will make the consequentialist point that casting a vote is incredibly low ROI...
But registering to vote gets people killed.
Liberals in Oregon KNOW this. They know the mortal danger and life-wrecking precarity that their myriad mechanisms of automatic voter registration causes. THEY DON'T FUCKING CARE.
It's not even that they think Dems can win more votes on the margin by auto-registering everyone constantly...
You may be shocked that the voter-registration system is an obvious murder machine. And you may assume *SURELY* they have some sort of anonymity checkbox...
You have to plead your case to a random official with documented paperwork proving restraining orders etc:
https://oregon.public.law/rules/oar_165-005-0130
OAR 165-005-0130 – Residence Address Disclosure Exemption