The Waning of the Secret Ballot

Does anybody care about secret ballots any more? No one has been campaigning openly for their replacement by public voting, but secrecy has been waning, and the reaction of the politically aware class has been an almost total lack of concern.

The essence of the secret ballot, the feature that makes it a genuine prophylactic against vote-buying and coercion, is that the voter cannot disclose his vote even if he wants to. If secrecy is voluntary, there is no real obstacle to those who would bribe or intimidate the electorate. The malefactor can watch as his victim fills out his ballot. There is no way to say, “Of course I voted for X, just like you said” while, in the privacy of the polling booth, marking Y instead.

Amazingly oblivious to such considerations, 29 states, including 16 of the 20 “battleground” states, allow voters to request absentee ballots whether or not they will actually be away from home on election day. An uncritical article in today’s Wall Street Journal discusses the trend. These ballots are almost always returned by mail. (Chicago in a rare exception; here, absentee voters have to show up at a special polling place prior to election day and cast their votes in secret.) John Fund, who worries about the potential for fraud (his new book, Stealing Elections, will be published on September 5th), estimates that 30 percent of the ballots cast this year will be absentee. In the OpinionJournal Political Diary (subscription only, but have I ever mentioned what a bargain it is at $3.95 a month?), he focuses on one example:

“The lack of in-person, at-the-polls accountability makes absentee ballots the tool of choice for those inclined to commit fraud,” the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded in 1998, after a mayoral election in Miami was thrown out because “vote brokers” were found to have signed hundreds of phony absentee ballots.

This year, Florida is seeing an explosion of absentee balloting. Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore has received 15,000 requests for absentee ballots in this month’s primary. That’s nearly three times the number of requests her office had gotten at this time two years ago.

Some Democratic officials in Florida are openly urging voters to use absentee ballots instead of the touch-screen machines, a bandwagon that has begun to attract Republican officials as well. “The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount,” says a glossy mailer, paid for by the Republican Party of Florida. “Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today.”

Fraud is definitely not a trivial concern, but, even if skulduggery can somehow be wished away, voting by mail is not consistent with the secret ballot. There is no way to prevent family, employers, friends or anyone else from asking to look at filled-out ballots – or to take care of the filling out themselves. Perhaps that won’t happen so frequently as to affect any election outcomes, but doesn’t every citizen, including the most timid and easily pressured, have the right to a wall of privacy in exercising his right to vote? If not, why don’t we revive the good old English system of voting openly? We could post who voted for whom on the Internet.

Back when the secret ballot was last controversial, in Victorian England, there were “compromise” proposals for optional secrecy. Ballot advocates rightly realized that that wasn’t secrecy at all. Nowadays we need a revival of their common sense.

Comments

[Gabriel]

present an argument for and against secret balloting

[Splatter]

This is an example of privacy being compromised by the lack of secrecy in voting.

"Political people love the absentee voter," said Kirstin Brost, of the state Democratic Party in Washington state, where 54 percent of votes in 2000 were cast by absentee ballot. "They're easier to track, and if someone is absentee, I've got three weeks to get them to vote, instead of just one day." Washington state, where voters can start voting on Oct. 13, permits voters to become permanent absentee voters.

In Washington, party workers like Brost seek to "convert" voters from Election Day voters to absentee voters. Then they can easily determine from county auditors' lists which voters' ballots have been received and which voters need another phone call.

No sign-up needed, just vote absentee and you are added their list. The old telemarketer tricks still work. The DNC needs to be put on the DNC list. Do Not Call list.