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Federal Judge Says No Right To Secret Ballot, OKs Barcoded Ballots
doug141 writes "A Colorado county put bar codes on printed ballots in a last minute effort to comply with a rule about eliminating identifying markings. Citizens sued, because the bar codes can still be traced back to individual voters. In a surprise ruling, Denver U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello said the U.S. Constitution did not contain a 'fundamental right' to secret ballots, and that the citizens could not show their voting rights had been violated, nor that they might suffer any specific injury from the bar codes."
LOL!
It seems that everywhere in the world, governments and corporations have decided that because we have the technology, it's okay to use it to abuse people's rights and freedoms in ways that would be illegal if they were done in person, or on paper.
Obviously, just barcode the people. It will make things much easier for admin.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
The fundamental problem is that lack of anonymity creates pressure to change one's vote not due to one's personal beliefs, but rather due to pressure from an outcome of what another might think. In the extreme case, we are talking potential retaliation by a regime or political part. This has happened repeatedly through history, and happens today. While the extreme case doesn't appear to apply in the US today, in pre-WW II German, it did. If civilized countries can change quickly to oppress, then how, if our inherent right to vote does not come with an obvious need for protections such as anonymity, can our constitution protect us indefinitely?
Don't eliminate identifying marks if you can download an app to decode the mark into a number, then run an algorythm against it to transform the number into names, and figure out how that individual voted.
Which they did.
On a local radio station.
With a county comissioners barcode, they told him how he voted.
This should be interesting seeing how Colorado is voting this year to legalize marijuana...
From the article and it's referenced information, namely Secretary of State Scott Gessler's guidelines on the matter, ballots were to include limited identifying marks to ensure that the same ballot would not be counted twice when votes were tabulated, but that individuals would not have their ball it's unique identifier linked to their voter registration.
What is changing here is that rather than a human-readable number, a barcode-only solution will be used for verification purposes to increase the difficulty of an individual vote being traced to a person.
The fact that Gessler's also identified multiple illegal immigrants who had voted in the former Colorado election through voter registration searches is irrelevant to the situation at hand.
Thirty four characters live here.
The whole purpose of a paper ballot is to keep your vote secret. If that was not the case you could far more easily went in and say your choice aloud.
You're right but the bigger threat isn't from a political player. The biggest threat is retaliation from your employer, your customers, your neighbors and maybe even your family. Imagine if your father-in-law found out you voted one way instead of another and didn't want you in the family because of it.
So the big concern I have is how these barcodes work. Are they public? Are they encrypted? And what I mean by encrypted is if the value is scrambled to link back to the original voter.
The reason I feel like this is unfortunately necessary is that it would be easy to sneak in votes that had just some barcode if it didn't have to be decrypted and validated. And without this 1-to-1 validation, how do we determine that the recorded votes for each person were truly and validly made? Unfortunately, if you want election boards to be perfect in their methodology, you should give them one of these to check against citizen lists or an external third party.
My suggestion would be to give users a randomly generated number that is then one way hashed with their SSN. Then that information can be published online and anyone can take their autogenerated number and plug it into the hash with their SSN. If they fear retaliation or if they fear their boss might demand the number from them to check on them, they can merely opt for the official to destroy their number. You can also implement laws protecting those numbers although we all know a solution without regulation is the best.
But I don't think you can get around an election official knowing who voted for what if you want accurate and secure election counts. It's a trade off but hopefully the may other laws we have protection people from politically motivated attacks remain.
If the barcodes are done right, it might be a valid way to assure there is no voter fraud. I guess the big question is: do we have evidence for a lot of voter fraud such that we need this?
My work here is dung.
If you take the time to learn what information is actually on the ballot you'll see that the lawsuit has no merit. The barcode relates the ballot to what was scanned when the vote was automatically tallied in case there are errors or a recount. Any possibility that the ballot could be linked back to an individual voter was speculation, the plaintiffs couldn't produce any evidence that it could actually happen.
They have no understanding of constitutional law. The constitution does now lay out our rights... we have our rights with or without the constitution. The constitution was meant to restrain the government. Since a few people thought that enumerating some of our rights explicitly in the Bill of Rights was a good idea, some how the foolish judges have the idea that if they weren't explicitly enumerated that they do not exist.
Some skimming around the internet on this subject is fairly interesting. Australia was the first country to implement the secret ballot in 1850, largely to curtail intimidation and other election day shennanigans that were used to influence elections. All elections in the US were secret ballot by the 1892 presidential election. However, this article in the Atlantic argues that the surest way to increase turnout is by making voting a matter of public record. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/abolish-the-secret-ballot/309038/
Anonymous ballots do NOT let you wote 100 times. When I vote, they cross my name off from the list of voters. So I can't vote again. The ballot is anonymous though - or it would be if I took care not to leave fingerprints.
She said that even if a ballot could be traced back to a specific voter, it doesn't show that a person's voting rights were violated, saying there was no "fundamental right" to a secret vote in the U.S. Constitution.
There is no Constitutional right to a secret ballot.
In the State of Oregon, all voting is done by absentee ballot. There's no privacy screen around you as you cast your vote. Your employer can stop by and say, "I'll pay you $1000 for your unused ballot, so I can fill it out how I want and submit it." If you're in an abusive family, your domineering alcoholic bipolar parent might force you to fill out the absentee ballot in front of them so they can control how you vote. There is no way the absentee ballot is considered a secret ballot, and yet we have no trouble when an entire state converts to voting by absentee ballot.
The State of West Virginia guarantees, in its state constitution, every resident's right to cast a public ballot. There's no mention of the secret ballot.
The secret ballot wasn't in use anywhere in the United States until it was first adopted by the city of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1888. The State of Massachusetts followed soon after. The first President to be elected by secret ballot was Grover Cleveland, in 1892.
We didn't use secret ballots to elect Washington, Jefferson, Jackson or Lincoln.
So, yeah. Anyone who claims we have a constitutional right to a secret ballot has an uphill road to hoe. History clearly shows that at no point in our nation's history has any court held the secret ballot to be a right.
" It's "progress" to hand over control of your life to a bunch of holier-than-thou statists who are CERTAIN that they - AND ONLY THEY - know what's best for you. Fucking morons."
True. It's better to let a corporation do that.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Technically they don't, only citizens of the appropriate country are allowed to vote in that countries various elections (if they have elections). That's not US, that's everyone in the world. Just try going to Spain, Germany, Russia, Japan, Australia, South Korea or any place you are not a citizen of and try to vote. If you're lucky, you'll just get turned away because some countries have distinct penalties for that kind of stuff.
Is it racist to limit voting to your own citizens? No. It is part of the basis of a country to be ruled by your own people and has been institutionalized since national voting began back in ancient history. Think about it, did the Huns ever try to vote in the Roman Empire? (Yes, the Romans had voting, just not the same way we do.)
In Oregon (which is 100% vote by mail), there is also a bar code on the mailing envelope. You sign the mailing envelope and your signature is verified against the one on file. The bar code is not a problem however because your actual ballot is in a separate "secrecy" envelope that you put inside the mailing envelope. There are no identifying marks on the secrecy envelope or the ballot itself. At the elections office one person verifies your signature, marks the record that you have voted, and takes the secrecy envelope out of the mailing envelope. The secrecy envelope is placed in a big box. Next, someone else take the big box, extracts the ballots from the secrecy envelopes and feeds the ballots into a scanner (they are "bubble sheet" ballots), where they are tallied. Representatives from the political parties and the public are encouraged to watch the process in person.
For those that don't like the concept of paying postage to vote, there are a wide variety of locations where you can hand deliver your ballot.
For those not in the US, Oregon is a state in the Northwest portion of the country.
Primaries are to select candidates. Candidate is not a public office.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Give out a tax rebate to everyone who votes. $100 should suffice.
Mail-in ballots inherently break the integrity of the voting process anyway*, so additional restrictions on them to reduce fraud is a reasonable step. And actually UPC or similar codes to guarantee uniqueness are not a problem - provided that there is no way to trace the UPC code back to the voter.
* Picture Guido standing behind you generously offering to not beak your legs if you vote the "right" way. Or an overbearing relative, union leader, or your boss at work. Point is without a secret ballot all manner of vote "buying" becomes viable and the entire process is undermined.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The U.S.A. is a free country, we do not require Identity Papers. I did not have a drivers license until age 33 and lived my whole life just fine. For you to say that I would be required to carry identity papers, would be to say that I live as a slave in a totalitarian government. I only carry my drivers license when driving, and only show it to a police officer in regards to a driving offense. That is all it is to be used for.
From the article and it's referenced information, namely Secretary of State Scott Gessler's guidelines on the matter, ballots were to include limited identifying marks to ensure that the same ballot would not be counted twice when votes were tabulated, but that individuals would not have their ball it's unique identifier linked to their voter registration.
IMO a better solution to this problem is to give the person counting the ballot a stamp. When the counter counts a ballot, they stamp it in one specific corner. If a ballot already has a stamp, you don't count it again. Need to recount? Choose another corner to stamp.
Only they do it in aggregate rather than on an individual basis.
If me and 50% of the voters in my Congressional district obey our masters and vote for 1) the incumbent or in non-close election years 2) the party that everyone knows will carry the House and Senate, we are "rewarded" with a louder/higher-seniority voice in Washington or at least a voice that won't get shouted down by the majority party.
The same holds true in state and in many cases local government.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I was under the impression that the United States practiced secret voting as specified under the Bill of Rights or the Constitution but apparently its just a method, it was known as "Australian Voting" in the 1800's, and its not specified under any of our foundation documents, as far as I can tell. Should be I think. I can't envision a strong democracy without it. Its been practiced here in all the jurisdictions I've ever voted in.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
This is not entirely true. You can vote in Australian elections if you are not a citizen of Australia, British subjects on electoral rolls before 1984 must vote there.
The citizens of the following Commonwealth countries had the status of a British subject in Australia as at 25 January 1984
Bahamas (Commonwealth of the)
Bangladesh (People's Republic of)
Barbados
Botswana (Republic of)
Canada
Cyprus (Republic of)
Fiji
Hong Kong
Gambia (The)
Ghana (Republic of)
Guyana
India (Republic of)
Jamaica
Kenya (Republic of)
Lesotho (Kingdom of)
Malawi (Republic of)
Malaysia
Malta
Mauritius
Nauru (Republic of)
New Zealand
Nigeria (Federal Republic of)
Sierra Leone
Singapore (Republic of)
Sri Lanka (Republic of)
Swaziland (Kingdom of)
Tanzania (United Republic of)
Tonga (Kingdom of)
Trinidad and Tobago
Uganda
United Kingdom and Colonies *
Western Samoa (Independent State of)
Zambia (Republic of)
If these were health, safety, or environmental regulations republicans would be screaming that the cost of implementing the regulations is a waste of tax dollars, that citizens have to be reimbursed for the "takings" (lost income, expenses) these regulations forced them to incur, and overall would blather about the rules being another example of intrusive big government. They would go on to say that any effect of improper voting is speculative and demand to see evidence of actual harm (thrown elections) before allowing any such regulations.
Amazing how republicans' math skills invert if you switch from talking about arsenic in drinking water to improper voting.
Your rights exist outside the constitution; it does not GIVE you your rights! The people must fight to exercise them and maintain them. The founders knew this, see "unalienable rights" (not in the constitution BTW.)
The ammendments restrict government powers from infringing on some of your rights; they never gave you rights. You have rights even if you are punished for exercising them. People drank what they wanted because that is their right and they defied government until prohibition was finally repealed; and all that did is prevent persecution of people exercising their right to drink what they wanted.
The constitution does not give you ANY privacy. People think they have a right to some privacy and as a result we have a small list of weak laws protecting that; none grant any rights, they only weakly defend them.
Any state with a law about identifying marks on the ballots which many states have because of a past history of paying for votes by looking for special identification marks should have a reasonable judge interpret (use their brain) that state identification marks make it far easier. The whole point of those past anti-corruption laws was not to ban people from drawing doodles on ballots but to prevent conspiracies that DID HAPPEN to undermine democracy! Having your government place unique doodles on your ballot for you may technically get around those old laws but for human brains who can THINK it is nothing but a childishly simple legal hack that should not be allowed. This is one of the reasons we have too many overly long, complex laws - a literal minded legal system is too stupid to function.
The judge is correct in saying Federal law has little to say about this; unfortunately, the states control elections so its a hard battle to repair and then defend democracy x 50.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
...and thus have they completely undermined the integrity of the ballot. If you can prove to Guido that you voted the way he told you to then it's only a matter of time until he starts making such demands. Honestly, are we going to have to re-learn this lesson every couple of generations?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Limiting voting to citizens is assumed to be a universal thing, but it's not. As another poster mentioned, the Commonwealth countries still have a system of voting rights in place between each other. It is a bit peculiar. For instance, a citizen of Jamaica doesn't necessarily have the right to live and work in Britain. However, if they should get the right to live in Britain, they automatically get the right to vote for Parliament. (I believe a Jamaican could not stand for office, but an Irishman can.)
If you did go to Spain or Germany, and you are an EU citizen, you can vote in local elections. Any EU citizen can vote in EU local elections regardless if they are a citizen of that country or not.
In the US, you do not need to be a citizen in order to vote in Takoma Park, Maryland. You need only be a resident of that city. If you remember the move Gangs of New York, a lot of work went into getting freshly immigrated Irish to vote in local elections.
Moral rights exist independently of government documents. Absent appeals to a higher power (e.g. "Creator", Declaration of Independence) granting these rights, these rights exist only as long as society agrees that they exist.
In some societies in history, parents had the moral right to abandon their kids, abuse their wives or children, hold slaves, etc. In many but not all societies in todays world, people have the moral right to disown/disinherit their children. In other societies, children have the moral right to expect an inheritance.
Many but not all moral rights are codified in national constitutions, basic laws, legally-enforceable declarations of rights, religious laws, and secular laws.
Unlike moral laws, which (again, absent appeals to a Creator or similar right-granting entity) can be changed without formal action as a society's attitudes change, laws that are written down require formal action to change.
In the case of those parts of United States Constitution that are being enforced and which have survived a challenge by a court that has jurisdiction over you (e.g. the US Supreme Court or the relevant Circuit Court of Appeal), it takes either a formal constitutional amendment or a court ruling to change the rights that you have.
Interestingly, if a given part of the Constitution is enforced but it has never been challenged in court, then there is nothing to stop a "gentleman's agreement" by society to change the meaning of that part of the Constitution.
As a hypothetical example that didn't happen: Let's say that in the 1790s everyone agreed that "freedom of religion" did not mean "no prayer in schools." Lets say that in the 1800s and early 1900s a few people disagreed but they didn't challenge it in court. Let's say that by the 1970s more people disagreed but rather than challenge it they simply asked local schools to stop praying. Let's say that by 2050 no school in America had prayers in schools, and law schools were teaching new lawyers and judges that our "new, enlightened" interpretation of the Constitution was correct. If asked, by far most kids born after 2050 would say "of course the Constitution means state-sponsored schools can't have prayer, the people who thought otherwise in the first 2 1/2 centuries of America were mis-reading the Constitution." In this case, you have a society changing a moral right and in turn, thanks to the lack of a court ruling "pinning" down what the Constitution actually means, society changing the meaning of the Constitution without any formal action to amend or nail down the meaning of the 1st amendment.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The term "Democratic" and its various forms can legitimately mean two different things:
1) An entity in which all decisions are made by popular vote.
2) An entity in which the government is highly accountable to the governed and, implicitly, in which those who govern are easily replaced by the governed in a democratic (meaning #1 above, by popular vote) manner.
An entity can be very democratic in the first sense even if one major decision - who will chair meetings - is not done democratically. If the person who chairs meetings is basically a figurehead with no real power, then not much harm is done in not having him elected.
An entity can be mostly democratic in the second sense even if no decisions other than electing who will govern are made by the governed.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Register here:
_ Name
_ Address (to make sure you get the right ballot)
_ thumb-print, recent photograph that still looks like you, or other all-but-unique biometric OR an ID backed by such a biometric.
Vote here:
_ grab one of many identical ballots and put it in a ballot box
Post-election fraud detection here:
_ check for duplicate registrations, knowing you can't catch them all. Investigate duplicates.
_ check for duplicate names at the same address and check for confirmed-unique and possibly-duplicate registrations and attempt to soft out the possibly-duplicate registrations
_ check for invalid addresses ("in the middle of the East River") and flag such registrations as invalid.
Post-election prosecutions:
_ Prosecute those who voted twice, knowing you will miss some
Subsequent-election re-checks
_ Where fraud investigations were inconclusive or could not be carried out, double-check past records with this elections' records and use that to continue investigating the suspected fraud from the last election.
Fear keeps honest people honest and makes fraud more difficult
_ In the next election, people will know that they have to work very very hard to vote twice and not get caught
_ People will know that even if they are not caught shortly after the election, they may get caught based on the documents they use to register with on the next election day.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In George W. Bush's home state of Texas, voter-ID laws are on hold in part because dozens of counties have NO place to get a driver's license or photo ID card. Everyone in those counties has to drive to the next county to get one.
Voter registration can be done by mail, which is a much lower burden on those with no car or who work basically the same hours as the DMV office is open.
By the way, the impact on minorities is not BECAUSE they are minorities, but because being a minority is, for now at least, highly correlated to being poor, lacking good access to transportation, and other impediments to getting to the DMV office to get a photo ID or drivers license. If poverty and lack of access to good transportation were both uniformly distributed over ethnic and racial groups and other "minority" groups, then voter-ID laws would still hurt the poor and those without access to good transportation, but it would not have a disproportionate effect on any particular racial or ethnic group.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I suspect the expiration date is a proxy for "new enough to be hard to counterfeit" or "new enough that it can be easily verified." It's also a proxy for "expired but no expiration date is on the card."
An officer military ID card issued in the 1970s is probably easy to forge. Or at least easy enough to make a fake that will fool the non-trained expert doing a quick visual inspection. If not one issued in the 1970s, then try the 1950s or 1930s.
While an officer military ID legitimately does not expire, student ID cards effectively expire when the student ceases to be enrolled.
As for an ID with an address:
It's reasonable to require a *collection* of documents that prove you are who you say you are, you live where you say you live, and you are eligible to vote. An old/expired but still-looks-like-you ID from a credible authority (e.g. school) with your name on it, mail with your name and address and a recent postmark, and a past, credible record with your name and city of birth or statement that you are a US citizen and an short affidavit swearing all of the documents are authentic should be enough to let you vote.
Absent such documents, it's reasonable for you to fill out "long form" affidavit where you fill in your name, address, and claim of citizenship ("born in American on or about BIRTHDAY" or "naturalized on or about BIRTHDAY" or "born abroad as a US citizen on or about BIRTHDAY based on the following facts...."), and a photograph taken by the election judge, printed out, and pasted to the affidavit with your signature over the photograph. For the sake of efficiency for everyone involved, this affidavit should double as an application for a free, photo-bearing, renewable voter-ID card that you can use in the next election.
In both cases, lying is both voter fraud and perjury. In most states, perjury is a felony.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Hell its Coke VS Pepsi!"
This is so wrong it's offensive. You need to get your facts in order before you say such absurd things.
The manufacturers of Coke and Pepsi are in competition.
We're never goig to get anywhere with them through voting. I think we should apply anti-trust legislation to them. Did you know that they own the debates? Together (yes, they work together on it) they manage and own the "presidential debates" we see on TV. It used to be run by the league of women voters, but the two parties, who share power and whose only real enemy is a third party, leveraged it away from them. You cannot have another voice in the discussion. Hell, you cannot even have a discussion.
http://people.howstuffworks.com/debate3.htm
The reason you're wrong is this isn't Coke vs. Pepsi at all. It's Coke vs. Coke in a collectable can.
If you opted to make a shadow vote, the receipt will display the shadow vote. If you did not create a shadow vote, it will show your actual vote. The web page will not tell you if it's the shadow vote or not. For this to work, the only two that know it's a shadow vote are the voter (who made the choice in the privacy of the voting booth) and a voting auditor in the event of an audit. (who doesn't know whose vote it is unless you complain)
When placing your vote you have the option to either have a vote you can verify later, OR have a variable vote you can show to someone later. Only the voter will know which path they chose, and that's what makes it useless to try to buy/force votes. I realize this may be slightly confusing so I will provide the scenarios and why they all work:
1) Average Joe goes to the booth and places his vote, doesn't get a receipt. Nothing changes from current. He's just placing his trust in the system to work.
2) paranoid Greg goes to booth and votes, and gets a receipt. That evening he takes his receipt and logs into the provided url and enters the password he made up when he voted, and can verify that the system has correctly recorded all his votes. If he loses the receipt, it's useless without the password. If someone forces him to show them the verification page and they don't like it, he can tell them it was a shadow vote he made up for someone else.
3) Husband tells bullied wife Dawn you better vote republican or you're getting a beating. Wife goes in and votes dem, but gets a shadow vote for straight ticket republican. Husband demands receipt and password and checks it and it's all republican. He's probably not too bright not to realize it's fake, but he has no way to tell otherwise and never will.
4) same scenario as (3) but with employer or anyone trying to buy Dawn's vote. they could pay her to vote one way, but they have no credible way to verify Dawn's vote later because she may have voted her way and given them her shadow vote receipt.
5) Tim votes and gets a receipt, but when he checks it online some of the votes are different than how he remembers voting. Greg submits a complaint, which, if a significant number of people complain about, will be investigated for tampering. (this isn't a PERFECT solution, but is a huge improvement over the current system where no one can tell if their vote may have been counted incorrectly)
6) Mary votes and gets a receipt. But when she tries to check it online, it's not found. Mary submits a complaint the same way Tim did, and if any significant number of ballots are reported missing, an investigation can be started, similar to Tim's complaint. Since the receipts are serialized and the precincts related to the receipt, votes being lost or discarded will be easy for the auditors to spot patterns for.
7) Pat was worried his boss might demand to see his vote so he decided to get a shadow vote. Later he found that his boss wasn't going to try to pull that. He'd like to verify the system correctly registered his vote, but he is out of luck. Pat gave up the ability to verify it by choosing to get a shadow receipt.
Take note:
A) your vote remains anonymous unless you submit a complaint because you think there was a problem. You will have to be willing to reveal your vote to submit a complaint, that is a necessary and I think sensible tradeoff. Complaints will be handled privately one-on-one with an auditor and a voter, to prevent someone from trying to use the complaint process to verify how you voted.
B) only the voter and the system know if the receipt displays a real or shadow vote. No one can prove which way you voted even with the receipt, except the auditors, which is necessary to verify a vote.
C) the voter has to make the decision when voting whethe
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Sarah Silverman recently posted this funny and to the point video pointing out the fucked up laws surrounding the new voter ID laws http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypRW5qoraTw
I agree with your first two sentences. Mod parent up.
However, the right to a secret ballot is already in the Colorado constitution. (It's also in some federal legislation called HAVA.)
This is a federal judge, properly finding that plaintiffs haven't asserted any controlling authority showing there is a federal question in the case, so it's filed in the wrong court.
I have not read the complaint in this case. If I'd been writing the complaint, I would have used equal protection, tied into the state right to a secret ballot. Under Bush v Gore, if they do it one way in Denver, they should do it that way in Boulder too. But I don't think there was an equal protection claim raised.
(I'm a former election lawyer, and I'm a former Boulder County officeholder, and I'm aware of this case, but I haven't read any of the documents, so I'm speculating.)