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Lawsuit Seeks To Block New York Ban On 'Ballot Selfies' (msnbc.com)
You have have the right to vote, but should you have the right to take a selfie at a ballot? According to ABC News, a federal lawsuit is challenging a New York state law that makes it a misdemeanor to show a marked election ballot to others: The lawsuit filed late Wednesday in Manhattan federal court seeks to have the law banning so-called "ballot selfies" declared unconstitutional. The lawsuit says publishing a voted ballot on social media can be a powerful form of political expression. It says that someone claiming they voted without photographic proof reduces the credibility of the individual. Attorney Leo Glickman, who filed the suit on behalf of three voters, says the lawsuit is consistent with claims made in Michigan, Indiana and New Hampshire, where similar laws have been struck down. In a separate report, Mother Jones' Kevin Drum explained the reasoning behind why a law against "ballot selfies" would exist in the first place: Just for the record, then, there is a reason for selfie bans in voting booths: it prevents vote buying. After all, the only way it makes sense to pay people for their votes is if you have proof that they voted the way you told them to. Back in the day that was no problem, but ever since secret ballots became the norm vote buying has died out. Selfies change all that. If I give you ten bucks to vote for my favorite candidate for mayor, I can withhold payment until you show me a selfie proving that you voted for my guy.
I guess...
In most of Europe it's a criminal offense. As it should be, since it undermines the integrity of the election.
I was planning to take a photo to show my future grandkids that I proudly voted for Hillary Clinton, but the night before I early voted I found out it's illegal to take a camera into the voting area in my state. :(
... so the argument that preventing selfies prevents vote buying doesn't really make sense.
In Texas they came out and said the reason was for the privacy of others. You have no right taking pictures of others in the voting place be it directly or in the background so they are not allowed within 100 meters of the voting area. Since you cannot have a camera in the area there is no camera in the privacy of the booth.
Making it illegal to post your "Ballot Selfie" on social media does not achieve the goal they claim to desire: preventing Vote Buying.
If someone is buying your vote, you can just take the picture/video and send it directly, or upload it to a private group, or any number of things. Publicly posting is not required at all.
This signature is false.
Allow Internet voting, with the following modification.
Authenticated voter can vote any number of times over a period of one month. Only a hash of their identity is stored with each ballot.
Authenticated voter can come back to the system at any time during the month, and either vote again, or select which ballot, by date and time submitted they wish to be counted as their real vote. If they don't specify, then either their first vote, or their last vote is counted, depending on a setting they can secretly pre-set before the election.
So the vote buyer or asshole husband has no way of knowing which vote of the person was counted, short of imprisoning them for the whole month.
People who get imprisoned for a month to control their vote have much bigger problems than the right to vote freely. They need to escape and contact the police.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Really!! A f***ing selfie in a voting booth?! Get a life!
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
> If someone even offers to buy your vote they would face tens of thousands of dollars in fines plus jail time. It's not worth the risk, someone will blab.
You say it's not worth the risk, but the Democrat party is doing so openly and publicly in Pike County, Illinios and elsewhere. Here's the Illinois vote buying statute:
Sec. 29-1. Vote buying.
Any person who knowingly gives, lends or promises to give or lend any money or other valuable consideration to any other person to influence such other person to vote or to register to vote or to influence such other person to vote for or against any candidate or public question to be voted upon at any election shall be guilty of a Class 4 felony.
Note it's a felony to give someone any "valuable consideration" (prize) to vote- regardless of whether they prove WHO they voted for. It's illegal to send a mailer out to all registered Democrats and people likely to vote Democrat saying "come vote and we'll give you _____." Yet that's what the Democrats did, openly. They set up an office next door to the polling place, 89 feet away to be exact, and sent mailers to likely Democrat voters promising prizes if they came out. It's standard practice for the Democrat party in many areas to have "voter party buses", which give out free food and prizes while driving people to the polling place. Yes, it's a felony, but that doesn't stop people from doing it.
There are already a lot of videos circulating that show vote-flipping, where you vote for A, but the machine records B. Making selfies illegal would make the evidence that this has happeened inadmissable in court.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
This happens practically every major election:
http://www.politifact.com/pund...
I recall during the 2004 elections it was done pretty openly by Democrats, under a program called "smokes for votes".
I mentioned that "voter party busses" giving stuff to people while driving them to the polling station is standard operating procedure for Democrats. Some people with stunted intellectual development will see that and think I said "Republicans are perfect". Obviously that's a complete non-sequitur, but some people will think that.
For the record, the Republican party has other issues. This year, they've managed to nominate, against the wishes of party leaders, a reality show clown.
Seriously, what is wrong with vote-buying? Yes, selling one's vote is mildly disgusting (though should not be illegal), but buying something another person wants to sell? Why not? I know at least one guy, who is equally disgusted with Trump and Clinton — he plans to stay home this time. If someone else felt like offering him money to go and vote for their candidate, why should that be illegal?
What are ethical justifications behind the laws prohibiting the practice?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You can not do it, if the vote is anonymous. That is the real danger, that stupid selfie thing is a direct threat against democracy. Allow selfies and you allow selfies to be forced. Vote the way you are told to or else and I want to see the selfie. How many freaks would force that on their family members or on others. Get caught taking a selfie vote and you should spend a week behind bars. The threat against democracy is extreme and should be punished.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
So if I host get-out-the-vote cocktail party for my friends in Illinois I should be convicted of a class 4 felony?
Either Illinois or you are insane. Readers can decide for themselves.
if non partisan it should be fine...but if your friends are gained from standing on a corner and saying hi, come to my party for pre vote drinks/food/ride...where there is partisan propaganda, signage etc then it should be highly discouraged. i would go so far as to say organizers of such events should be barrred from boosting in the course of the event.
Paying a registered Democrat to vote isn't vote buying. That registered Democrat is not being directed to vote Democrat. Thus, it's not a vote buying. You might as well argue that the "I voted" stickers given out are vote buying.
Learn to love Alaska
The lawsuit says publishing a voted ballot on social media can be a powerful form of political expression.
Sorry. Campaigning by the voting booths or threatening to hurt people who don't vote or who do vote differently from you would also be some powerful forms of political expression, but all those are also prohibited by lawful place and manner restrictions on free speech.
There are certain places where no public expression is allowed, and the voting booth is one of them, unless your 'selfie' is to expose some newsworthy thing, and not, say, what your votes were....
In other words.... campaigning, or taking selfies is prohibited, regardless of the content of your message or who you voted for, so it's not a particular restriction based on content of your message, so it's not considered an infringement on free speech rights.
So the while thing comes down to the definition of "influence". If I am nice to someone while wearing a campaign button, would that count as trying to "influence" their vote? It would also almost explicitly make it illegal for someone in a Make American Great Again hat to leave a tip in a restaurant. So any reasonable interpretation would mean "vote buying" in a more traditional sense, not just "being nice" to voters while representing a party.
Learn to love Alaska
If you are ALLOWED to post a selfie, then you can also be FORCED to post a selfie proving you voted the way you were threatened to vote.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
We don't have the elections we need, we have the election we deserve.
Of course this whole shit started because some stupid celebrity was charged of doing that.
The idea is extremely simple, and I think everybody should have learned about this in school. Voting needs to be secret not as an option, but as an obligation to keep it as fair as possible. It became a law for a reason, not out of a whim or something.
The moment selfies in ballots become legal is the moment a bunch of candidates will start trying to rig the system.
I'll give you this or pay you this much, but only if you vote for me. If you don't vote for me your boss will fire you. You go there, vote for me, take a selfie, publish it, and then we'll be ok.
If people think stuff like that won't happen, they are delusional. It's in the history of every democractic country. It's why the law is there in the first place.
It's also ridiculous that someone would imply that political expression on social networks is dependant on such a frivolous idiotic thing.
Yeah, you took a fucking stupid selfie in front of a ballot, how politically engaged you are. Now go save some african children from starvation and poverty by giving some likes. Powerful form of political expression my ass. This is the weakest most lazy form of political expression I've ever heard about.
So a Democratic bus driving "voters" around isn't vote buying? There are some posters above who disagree.
Learn to love Alaska
1) Embassy voting is not a real thing. Nor would it make any sense, as different states handle elections differently, but embassies are a unified federal system. Nor does the US have embassies in every country. Nor are embassies guaranteed to be anywhere remotely near where a person lives within a country.
2) "Advance voting" makes no sense for expats. Believe it or not, some citizens live overseas. Including the military, by the way, who you apparently want to disenfranchise.
3) Your #1 case does nothing to guarantee vote privacy. The person can very well watch the individual fill out their ballot and then seal it up. All it does is make it harder/more expensive for the disabled to vote.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Carlson said that Democrats give Newports to the homeless to get them to the polls. Based on the evidence, Carlson is citing an isolated case where authorities were unable to prove that votes were traded for cigarettes, or that the cigarettes were an enticement. On one occasion in Milwaukee, as many as three Democrats gave rides to homeless men to City Hall to cast absentee ballots. At some point, they gave some of the men cigarettes. There is no evidence that the cigarettes were Newports, and investigators did not find that the cigarettes were offered as an inducement to vote.
This is a pathetic citation. I'm sure there's shady business going on here and there, and that's especially true when your standard for evidence against a huge group is the slightly dubious actions of a few individuals, but even by that pretty worthless standard this example fails.
If you want to give up your right to casting a secret ballot, you should be free to do so.
Yes, if you give people stuff to come to the polling place (in other words, to vote) that is a felony in Illinois. Note I didn't write the law, I just read it (and copy/pasted it for you to read).
You're a reasonably intelligent guy, Marc, so I imagine if you read the statute again you'll notice it *is* vote buying:
Sec. 29-1. Vote buying.
Any person who knowingly gives, lends or promises to give or lend any money or other valuable consideration to any other person to
influence such other person to vote
OR to register to vote
OR to influence such other person to vote for or against any candidate or public question to be voted upon at any election
shall be guilty of a Class 4 felony.
Geez, you mean each state does it differently? No independant electoral commission?
Holy shit thats even more stupid than I thought the US system was.
Voting in embassies works great for us.
Yeh, I know here is one of the more credible videos.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...
why does this even matter?
vote bullying? does the fact that someone you work with or know voted matter to you? if it does that much...you have other issues... seek help!
as long as your not intentionally trying to get an unwilling photo of me, I really don't care where someone is taking a selfie... and to that point, I really don't see how it would be anyone elses.
Which means you'd never prove that the corruption happened unless you just outlaw the photo in the first place. This protects people. It's not like this couldn't have happened 30 years ago with a Polaroid.
The US system is patently absurd. And no, they'll never change it. They don't even tackle the low-hanging fruit - for example, 1,2% of Americans have no voting representation in congress (DC, Puerto Rico, others).
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
All this hyperventilating about "vote buying" and "undermining the election" is utter crap. Unless you can show a printed receipt of exactly who you voted for, any photo is meaningless. Old style machine - until you pull that handle to open the curtain your vote is not recorded and may be changed. Scanned ballots? Oops! I made a mistake, rip this one up and give me another please, thanks!
Jimmy Carter was probably the most honorable major party candidate but your point is well taken.
I personally think he was mis-guided but Goldwater had his principles and stood by them, you have to admire him for that.
Except that person that boards the "Democrat" bus is under no obligation to vote for any specific candidate or party. Do the bus providers hope you vote for their candidate, sure do, but they do not ask who you are supporting before boarding the bus and they don't ask you to provide a "selfie" afterwards proving who you voted for.
Valuable consideration:
consideration that either confers a pecuniarly measurable benefit on one party or imposes a pecunarily measurable detriment on the other
Contrast: Nominal consideration
Held - disposable plastic and paper cups are not valuable consideration.
Definition of "pecuniarly": in terms of money
I would predict that most any court would find that "I voted" stickers are nominal consideration, not valuable consideration - there is no benefit to the recipient which can be measured in monetary terms. On the other hand, if someone gives out $20 Walmart gift cards, the benefit is clearly measurable in monetary terms.
You misstate the holdings in Citizens United. The holdings are that:
a) You have the first amendment right to create and distribute pamphlets, films, or other speech materials advocating a political view.
b) Creating and distributing pamphlets, films, or other speech materials typically costs money.
c) Therefore, you have the first amendment right to spend your money creating and distributing pamphlets, films, or other speech materials.
The holding is that in order to exercise your free speech rights in a meaningful way, you might reasonably need to spend some money, and you have the right to do that.
Imagine if the holding were reversed: The first amendment does NOT extend to anything you spent any money on - you may write letters, but not if you bought the paper or the pen you write with. You may talk, but you may not buy microphone. You may author a web site, but you may not pay $10/year to have it hosted where it's actually on the internet.
There is no holding that "money is speech". It is legal to hand Secretary Clinton a letter asking her to grant a contract to your company, it is illegal to hand Secretary Clinton money for granting a contract to your company. On the other hand, it IS legal to buy paper on which you write a letter to Clinton.
...and his explanation outweighs reasons for allowing it. Same reason not to print receipts that can be verified without any additional information.
Exactly this.
Repubs or anyone else could do the same thing. It just happens to help Dems out more so they do it.
But advertising is an indirect form of vote manipulation. All candidates spend huge amounts of money on ads and tangible goods (buttons, flyers, etc) in order to try to influence people to vote a particular way. In effect trying to buy votes.
But we don't call that vote buying, we call that advertising.
Same thing if you give someone a ride and give your spiel. As long as you don't tell them they need to vote a particular way, then this is effectively just advertising.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Madonna offered blowjobs to people voting for Clinton, this would be " other valuable consideration".
Now you might suggest that this was a "joke" (she seemed serious at the time), but if one blowjob was offered (already done), and accepted (vote cast for a blowjob), regardless of actual payment, then she should be prosecuted under this statute.
Just sayin ;)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"no evidence" is often cited reason by Democrats. Even when evidence is provided, it becomes "not proof". Or "I don't recall" or some other such nonsense. Everyone knows it is going on.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
That's the whole discussion. Bringing camera-enabled phones into a polling place is no more or less illegal.
Does freedom of speech require credibility? Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" is just as good whether or not you think he really disagrees with British rule in his heart.
Let's say Person A furnishes authenticated proof they voted for Giant Douche. Penn and Teller, Bruce Schneier, some Lloyds of London claims investigators, and some unidentified Men in Black all examine the process and they say they're unable to think up a way it could have been faked.
Person B shows "evidence" they voted for Turd Sandwich but everyone knows they were guaranteed a means and opportunity to forge it. They went into a booth, containing a PC with image manipulation software and a staff of graphics experts, and they were not allowed to leave until 24 hours later, when they emerged with a bag of shredded ballots which were immediately burned, and a "photo" where they're voting but the font used on the ballot has been changed. You know for sure the photo has been touched but you don't know if circles on the ballot depicted have been changed, or that it's the ballot that was used for voting. You just don't know.
Person A and B did not get to decide the process. I inflicted this upon them. I say I decided, before I knew how anyone would vote, that Person A gets to have proof and Person B does not. I tell you I flipped a coin, but I didn't actually let you see me do that. I might be lying. You don't know.
You are trying to decide between Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich. Does either of their expressions help you decide? Does one help more than the other? Can you explain how you worked the problem?
(IMHO: it makes no difference, and the credibility issue is 100.0% irrelevant.)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
You can ruin you ballot and request a new one in, as far as I know, every poll in the US. That doesn't solve the issue with coercion that the banning on photos prevents since the ruining of the ballot and request for a new one occurs outside of the booth and anyone present at the poll can see you doing it.
So as for the examples given above of an abusive or controlling spouse, they would most likely see you ruining your ballot and requesting a new one and then demand you show them both pics of your ballot.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
You can't take it out because it couldn't be recounted. If you'd be fired for not voting a partcular way, then you get fired, and sue them for $10M. The manager that fires you spends 10 years in prison, and the practice ends. Vote buying is not nearly the problem the fraudsters claims it is. Much bigger is the spoiling of ballots you don't want, stuffing with ones you do, and the inability for anyone to audit the secret vote.
Learn to love Alaska
Geez, you mean each state does it differently? No independant electoral commission?
Yes. The United States was conceived of and implemented as being a thin shell over the independent States to handle the tasks that individual states couldn't take care of on their own, such as common defense, trade laws, and such. Each state has always been responsible for and capable of running their own elections. That's why there is little information about elections in the US Constitution.
The GP was obviously posting a parody, but he also has a point.
At what point should get-out-the-vote initiatives be banned? Obviously, paying someone to vote Democrat or Republican or whatever is a serious threat to democracy, but paying someone to go to the polls and vote for their choice on the secret ballot isn't.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Put copyrighted decorative designs on every ballot, so that any photo that shows enough of the ballot to be useful has enough of the decoration to infringe on copyright. (The Federal government itself can't get a copyright on anything it produces directly. This is not necessarily true of the states. Moreover, both the Feds and the states can buy copyrights.)
Then, if anyone creates an illicit copy of part of a ballot, sue them for intentional copyright violation. The statutory damages for that are ruinous.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
From what I read of the Illinois law, driving people to the polling place is probably okay. Offering them prizes as inducement to get on the bus is a felony. Right or wrong, it's a felony.
Certainly we can expect that some (all?) of the * Party operatives offering people stuff to go vote will also make it clear who you're expected to vote for, who is giving you this stuff.
You forget that in America, votes are entered into computers, with no oversight and no scrutineering. Some (Diebald) even have a supervisor "adjust votes" screen in case the voters make mistakes.
It would be very embarrassing if 10,000 selfies of people voting purple were to be found in a booth that only recorded 2,000 purple votes.