Do the French and British require ID and in person voting?

I don't understand why only US citizens should have the right to vote for our President. If you take the initiative to sneak in you should have the right to cast not one but two votes. Why? Because you're trying extra hard.

British and French Election Lessons for America

They require ID and conduct most voting on election day.

By Matthew O. Skrod, WSJ

July 29, 2024 1:18 pm ET

American liberals cheered when the British Conservative Party and the French National Rally lost elections this month. Conservatives might cheer for a different reason: British and French election procedures demonstrated the efficiency, consistency and clarity that ours sorely lack.

Like most European countries, neither the U.K. nor France allows early in-person voting in general elections. Polling stations are open only on election day. In the U.S., 47 states permit no-excuse early in-person voting, starting an average of 27 days before the election, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Pennsylvania opens such voting 50 days in advance, meaning its elections last longer than this year’s official campaign periods in Britain and France, which were 43 and 28 days, respectively.

Mail voting infamously delayed several states’ results in 2020. France, like most European countries, has no mail-in voting. The U.K. allows it but requires voters to apply for a mail ballot and submit identification, and officials don’t count ballots that arrive after polls close on election day.

All U.S. states allow citizens to vote by mail in some form, and eight automatically send mail ballots to everyone on the rolls. Eighteen states accept mail ballots that arrive after Election Day—often several days later, and in Illinois’s case two weeks later—so long as they were postmarked on time. That’s one reason votes in America are counted so slowly.

Another is that 48 states use “provisional ballots,” which they hold aside until validation of voters’ eligibility arrives. States typically allow several business days for these ballots to be adjudicated and counted. Washington state allows up to 21 days. Twenty-four states don’t start scanning ballots into electronic tabulators until Election Day, a practice that, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, is conducive to tabulation delays and errors and thereby “can stoke the flames of mis- and disinformation.”

The U.K. and France avoid such problems by maintaining strict voter rolls and requiring voter ID at polling stations, as do virtually all countries in Europe (although France excuses small towns from this provision). Both countries also use paper ballots that are counted by hand at the local level, which makes for a straightforward process in both voting and counting. It preventively avoids issues that might attend complex machines, computers, punch cards and the like. Both Britain and France have long retained this streamlined analog procedure to allay concerns over election security should they change it.

Since neither country has mail or “provisional” ballots outstanding when polls close, tabulation advances quickly. Full results are usually known early the next day.

Both countries notably avoid reporting vote tallies in progress. Officials hold results until all votes in a constituency have been counted, so candidates aren’t moving ahead and falling behind publicly in real time. As we saw in 2020, that can be disconcerting and misleading for candidates and voters, and it encourages some to cry foul.

American lawmakers and election officials should pay heed to the lack of election drama in the U.K., France and elsewhere. Their procedures offer an example that U.S. states could follow.

Mr. Skrod is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal.