The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system.
The tool, which is being rolled out in phases, is designed to be used by state and local election officials to give them an easier way to ensure only citizens are voting. But it was developed rapidly without a public process, and some of those officials are already worrying about what else it could be used for.
NPR is the first news organization to report the details of the new system.
For decades, voting officials have noted that there was no national citizenship list to compare their state lists to, so to verify citizenship for their voters, they either needed to ask people to provide a birth certificate or a passport — something that could disenfranchise millions — or use a complex patchwork of disparate data sources.
It's fascinating to see this find new pastures in the new world. As a proud Russian citizen.
Some day you'll remember with nostalgie those years of the ruling party actually caring to win elections.
Jokes aside, it's easier to cheat now because it's easier to do everything, and that's because of the Internet and modern computing systems.
You can't unmince minced meat back.
But you can apply the same change in a different direction and see that today direct non-anonymous democracy is actually plausible, if it's instituted, for big countries. 100 years ago it simply wasn't possible. Now it is.
Or that today Soviet system (as in Soviet democracy and not totalitarian state capitalism) is actually possible to build. When they were trying, they couldn't, they didn't possess the means.
And that both these things are actually what these people have done to us, but inverted. Our "direct vote" is the data they collect about us to classify and predict us for control. Our "Soviets" are that classification, and our "central planning" is those predictions and control.
They've done all this, just directed for their own interest. So maybe one can do the opposite.