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Pull Lever, Don't Snap Shutter: It May Be Illegal To Post Your Ballot
An anonymous reader writes "Proud voters are already posting their ballots on Instagram but ProPublica's Lois Beckett reports that you may want to check your state laws first since showing your marked ballot to other people is actually illegal in many states."
I wonder if she will be arrested as she had hers printed on her rubber dress.
http://www.webpronews.com/katy-perry-skintight-ballot-dress-hits-election-rallies-2012-11
I'm not showing it to anybody, I'm just putting on the internet.
If you can prove how you voted, to anybody, you can demonstrate to some interested third party that you voted the way they wanted you to. Which means you could sell your vote, or be coerced into voting a certain way.
That's also why any voting proposals that involve a receipt showing that your vote for Smith rather than Jones are a bad idea, as are any proposals involving a way to look up your own vote online after the election.
I am officially gone from
Would like to see someone get prosecuted over this. This is a clear freedom of speech issue and the government would lose.
Have gnu, will travel.
This is not federal gov't, but States are not much better. Why would you want to allow your State to do that to you, to throw you in jail for a year and fine you thousands of dollars for telling people how you voted? The government is full of dirty pigs and dogs, not people. People OTOH need to learn that all government laws and regulations and taxes are corruption by default.
AFAIC every law is corruption. Government would have to do something extraordinary to prove otherwise to me and even if they did prove a law not to be corruption by default, they would have to prove it to me over and over, maybe every week or every month that it is not corruption, because anything that is passed CAN be corruption even if it is not originally intended or used as such.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
People would stand up on a temporary platform and shout out their choices to the recorders, optionally followed by a fist-fight if it was a close election (;-))
--dave
In many places it is illegal to bring any sort of electronic device into the voting booth.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Why would you do that? And why does anybody believe these are ballots being cast? As other /.ers have pointed out, if somebody paid me to vote a certain way, I'd photograph the ballot, then I'd spoil it and ask for a new ballot. Good grief.
In FL, if you enter the polling place and take a picture you're going to be talking to the police/sheriff. Well, if you get caught. And besides, the whole point is to have an anonymous vote. Put a damn picture of you and your "I Voted Today" sticker online.
That would seem to be in violation of our 1st Ammendment rights.
As it should be.
Before people rant, let's make this simple, cut and dry.
If I am allowed by law to prove who I voted for -- then people with guns can coerce me to prove I've voted for their candidate.
This is about electoral integrity, not speech.
Now -- to be blunt, it would be nice to be able to snap a picture of my ballot up until the moment I hit "submit" or "vote" or pull the lever. But never during or after.
It's not like our police force has the resources to enforce this. The worst that might happen is your picture is taken down for terms of use violations.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Apparently there is no need to prove who you voted for now, since you can't really choose anyway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdpGd74DrBM
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
So, the law against murder is corruption?
This is obviously a violation of the right to speech (and I do not care to call it 'first amendment', you have all the rights until the government proves that it needs authority to violate a right that you have, and the authority is defined by the Constitution, so check with your State Constitution whether it is in violation).
Here is another case of First Amendment violation by a government official. Dick Durban forced the company in question (Parkmobile), to retract their statement, which they issued, that laws passed by Senate (including one Dick Durban's amendment to 'consumer protection rights act') cause prices to go up. This is obviously true. If a credit card issuer cannot charge different fees to different people (price discrimination) based on their use patterns and such, then all prices must go up to cover the costs of the lost revenue, otherwise it can be a loss to the credit card company. I know that credit card companies are not universally loved or anything, but they have to generate a profit on their operations, not a loss, and any government law that fixes prices causes mis-allocation of resources, some sort of re-allignment of cause and effect. Any time government fixes prices that act has consequences, and they are all negative to the consumer (rising prices, fewer choices, worse quality, etc.)
So Parkmobile responds to the credit card issuer price hike by raising their prices by 13 cents and they send an email explaining why the prices went up. The Senator hears it and attacks the company, threatens it in various monetary ways, etc. This is clearly violation of the first amendment as well, Dick Durbin should be forced to resign. But hey, this is America, politicians are not held to the simple standard of upholding and protecting the Constitution, politicians are above the law.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Think of the emails we've been seeing that employers have sent to their workers. I think many of those employers would love to see how everyone votes. If showing your ballot becomes the norm, I'd expect "someone" at the business to start throwing a "we voted" party with a slideshow of everyone's ballot. You may want to keep yours secret, but "everyone does it" so make sure to send your pic to the party organizer to prepare the slideshow. And if you don't care about employers seeing votes, maybe you care about unions, churches, schools, bar owners, or neighborhood thug. Best to not allow proof of votes if we care about keeping them secret.
You are not allowed to take photos in Maryland.
"2. You cannot use your cell phone, pager, camera, and computer equipment in an early voting center or at a polling place."
They don't want your employers demanding to see your marked ballot. They don't want people to stand around photographing who is voting. Etc.
The exception is journalists who may photograph the voting process as long as no ballots are visible and no individuals are identifiable.
Although posting your ballot may be illegal, it's unenforceable as a matter of law.
There's no way to prove that an image is your ballot.
The state has to prove chain of custody. Can they prove that you actually took the image (as opposed to, for example, downloading it off the internet)? Can they prove that you snapped your actual vote (as opposed to taking a picture and then changing the vote)? Can they prove that you didn't snap a picture of someone else's vote?
Can they prove that you didn't photoshop the image?
Even if they can make a good case for chain of custody (a video of you actually casting the vote would take a lot of effort to fake), would the state actually prosecute? The bad publicity for prosecuting this while taking time away from more serious crimes (murder, rape) would be a big disincentive.
There's also the personal freedoms angle. Certainly no one can be forced to prove their vote, but if someone wants to proudly show their vote, could this not be considered a freedom of speech issue?
There may be some grumbling from government about this, and some websites could be asked (without a warrant) to take some pictures down, but that's about all that will happen.
Government is powerless to prevent this, and they know it.
...I would NOT trust the ballot.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
It's unfortunately all too easy.
1. Request absentee ballot
2. Receive absentee ballot
3. Sign absentee ballot
4. Receive payment from buyer
5. Hand over absentee ballot to buyer
6. Walk away while they fill it out however they like and mail it in for you
IMHO, this is the easiest, simplest, and most commonly abused form of voter fraud. Yet none of the supposed "voter fraud" measures proposed predominantly by Republicans address this at all. It's all a smoke screen for suppressing voters that typically lean Democrat.
"Preventing Democratic Votes" under the guise of "Preventing Voter Fraud"
If you think the UN could add legitimacy to anything, I think you have bigger problems.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
This could be a good test of my first amendment rights. I'm in Michigan, I'm tempted to test this out. I'm voting Libertarian, so none of my guys are going to win anyway.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
If we aren't going to chase down voter fraud or even implement the same identification requirements for voting as we require at the local DMV, what are the chances we're going to chase down people taking photos of their own ballot?
Legal to Photograph Your Marked Ballot
Alabama
Delaware
Maine
North Dakota
Rhode Island
Tennessee
Vermont
Wyoming
The Law on This is Unlcear
Arkansas
Connecticut
DC
Hawaii
Idaho
Kansas
Kentucky
Maryland
Ohio
Illegal to Photograph Your Marked Ballot
All Other U.S. States
Source
and didn't your parents pay any attention to you. all the kids these days seem to be attention whores posting look what i did crap on the internet for their friends to comment on and to show the world how important they are
seriously, i learned about this in social studies. up to the early 1900's before the secret ballot everyone sold their vote. Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall were big in NYC.
for all you dumb kids who think movies are like real life go check out an oldie called Gangs of New York. the main character votes 5 or 6 times.
How would you taking a picture ensure legitimacy?
It's not that posting the picture should be illegal, it's that you shouldn't be allowed in to vote if you're taking in some way of proving how you voted. I know that's a bit heavy handed, but any other way allows an employer or abusive spouse, etc., to force you to prove to them how you voted. At least this way you can say "they won't let me in."
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
This rationale means that citizen votes that carry a little more weight than throwing a coin in a wishing well can't be "sold". But a senator/congressman who votes on something that has a much more direct effect can and are sold every day.
Conveniently, keeping voters from having a receipt prevents them from verifying how (or if ) their vote was recorded. This suggests the question: Who are we more worried about, the people who want to pay us for votes, or the people who count the votes?
If you're in the election fraud business, which would be tougher? Buy raw votes and require validation from each voter, or buy a person or persons involved in the tallying of those votes? (or hire a 3rd party to tamper with electronic voting systems )
Yes, you can sneak your smartphone out while voting and take a picture of your ballot. No, it's not proof of how you voted, since after taking the picture, you could "accidentally" put a stray mark on the ballot and take it back to the poll worker, who will happily shred it and give you a new blank ballot--Florida lets you do this twice per election before you're SOL.
They're ignoring the huge loophole: the absentee ballot.
If I request an absentee ballot mailed to me, I could, all with a video camera running, fill out the ballot, put it in the inner envelope, sign the affidavit, put everything in the outer envelope, stamp it, put the camera on a windshield suction-cup mount, drive to the post office, and throw the envelope in a drive-up mail drop. With some good sleight-of-hand, this too could be faked.
With an absentee ballot, you can theoretically force someone to sign the affidavit, hand you the blank absentee ballot and unsealed envelopes, and let you vote on their behalf and mail in the ballot. The obvious target of such an attack would be someone who is financially or physically dependent on you, such as an unemployed spouse, adult child in high school or college, or an employee.
That having been said, I would _not_ want to be the boss when one of my employees rats me out and forwards my "give me your ballots" e-mail to the Supervisor of Elections and the state Division of Elections. I, for one, would have absolutely no problem getting my boss nailed for voter coercion.
Oh shhiiiiiiii!
And thus began the meme of taking photograph a photograph of your ballot having your feet of the ground with three other people who are spitting at horses and winking at publicly unshaven females whom they are unacquainted with who serve wine in teacups and who won't call them "master" when out on a date.
Learn how to do a Google search, then look for image map input. An indicator of a valid input is the area of an image highlighting to show the input to the user. A poorly-designed interface that intends to mislead would show a very small area of the image dedicated to input from the wrong button. A well designed interface would show the area being input but not the intended result. I don't think the lowest bidder would be that careful.
Photos would prove me either way.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Seriously folks, I'm in favor of voting in such a way that the voting machines are in separate buildings, one candidate per building. Each building has a large sign that displays the current count for that candidate, for that building. All this secret voting and whatnot... really? Why? Because we're seriously scared of being bullied? Fuck people, really? Bullied in 2012, by who? If yall are just a bunch of pussies that depend on fear, then what's your vote worth anyway? Why not just get scared by all the lies built up by the candidates, in order to get elected in the first place. But basically where I get lost is in this idea behind not wanting to publicly announce who you voted for. People put signs in their yard as is, no one has reported any lynchings due to this in.... anyone, anyone? Fuck you and fuck your fear, these are not times to be scared. Change isn't going to come by way of the next president, and if you are scared to speak your mind, you're already fucked, so even if a new president did step in, and act like a real human being, you still wouldn't benefit.
Yeah, I know this sounds like an off-topic rant, but seriously, there's a hidden truth to being told that you cannot show others how you voted. If you can't see that, then fuck it anyway.
Another is for all government interaction to be done in some electronic fashion with the screen displaying whatever language the user selects, probably up to and including Klingon.
If Klingon culture comes to voting, can I challenge the winner to a fight to the death if I don't approve of his policies? I'll wager that neither BHO or WMR have experience handling a Bat'leth.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Let's leave selling votes to those who are expert in it.
Verify who I am and sign for a paper ballot.
What's involved in that verification process? Here in New York, all I'm allowed to do as a poll-worker is ask you for your address and signature. If the address you give doesn't match the address on file you can't vote. In theory we can challenge you if the signature doesn't match but that never happens. Signatures change over time, and we are hardly handwriting experts. There is essentially no mechanism in place to keep people from voting under your name, which is a double whammy because you lose your vote even as they get to cast multiple ones.
Democrats don't like voter ID laws, because they feel (with some justification) that their base is less likely to have ID and more likely to be burdened by the process of obtaining it. I'm not sure what the solution is, but we need something that's more secure than what's currently in place across much of the country.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
She's a CIA spy and was propped up to keep tabs on Lady Gaga.
The old laws in my state deal with corruption issues of the past and work because those techniques are not a problem today despite advances in technology making old scams more powerful.
We can't MARK ballots incorrectly or they are thrown out and during a recount a panel must review ALL such ballots. The law was created because of a scam where special marks were used to show how YOU voted so you could be compensated or not fired etc. The spirit of such laws is sound and most are broad/vague enough to cover new methods of doing the same old scam.
Ignorant people need to be made aware of why such things were stopped and how they could become a problem again. This is the problem with democracy in that successful solutions continue beyond recollection at which point the citizens are unaware of their benefits and fail to maintain them in the long term. At some point the history education is too burdensome and relying upon appeal to tradition is dangerous which is one of the reasons democracies always fail and history repeats itself.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
One example is Punchscan, a system where you vote by marking your choice on a double sheet of paper with holes punched through the top sheet so that you simultaneously mark both sheets. The top sheet, which has the candidates' names on it, is destroyed, the other is scanned and then taken home. The sheets you take home doesn't have the names of the candidates on them (they are referred to by randomly ordered letters), so nobody can tell who you voted for, but you can later look up the scanned version online to verify that the markings match and your vote was counted.
http://punchscan.org/
Says the anonymous coward. This deserves a funny mod just for the irony.
Photographic evidence is not admissible by itself - it requires a person who can testify that the image is an accurate representation of what happened.
Lots of people will point out counterexamples to this, but the sum total is that people aren't aware of their rights, don't want to make the hassle, and haven't pushed the issue.
Evidence can be forged - this is why forensics investigators have to keep a chain of custody, and this is why police aren't allowed to simply read from their notes when on the stand.
In your specific case, all it takes is for the person to state "Oh, I didn't take that. My boyfriend took it and E-mailed it to me". The boyfriend can say the same thing, so who then is guilty of the crime? Add as many people as you like to this - if you believe that a crime was committed by one of 5 (say) people, but you can't with certainty point to any one, who is responsible?
People don't realize that if they simply don't admit to anything, there is little the police can do.
It is a felony to leave the voting booth and voting location with your ballot. Makes sense since the ballots are serialized.
But no prohibition on photographing or recording. So we can do it.
Video: http://youtu.be/QdpGd74DrBM
shows electronic voting machines are rigged and broke
>(Incidentally, I see a lot of people proposing reformed voting systems that include a hard confirmation that your vote for X was counted. Voting reform is good, but that particular idea is bad, for this exact reason. Cut it out).
That exact idea is bad, but there is cryptographic High Magic which allows taking home a token which cannot be used to determine how you voted, but which can be used to check online that your vote was counted the way you cast it, still not proving which way you cast it. See Chaum and Shamir.
If the point of a secret ballot is to be secret, why do you have to register to vote and are encouraged to publicly disclose your party affiliation ? In many states, CA for example, voter registration records are sold or made available to many organizations for many purposes. Why is it I can't show up with a passport or driver license and exercise my right as a citizen to vote, without this "registration" requirement ? Why is it that other countries can do it and we can't ?