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Judge Refuses To Block New York 'Ballot Selfie' Law (reuters.com)
Last week, we wrote about a federal lawsuit that is challenging a New York state law that makes it a misdemeanor to show a marked election ballot to others. Today, we learn that a federal judge has refused to block enforcement of the law. Reuters reports: U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan said it would "wreak havoc on election-day logistics" to issue a preliminary injunction against the law, which prohibits the display of "ballot selfies." Three voters sued on Oct. 26 to block enforcement of the law, saying that sharing ballot selfies was a form of speech protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. But the judge said that because of the imminence of next Tuesday's election, the voters needed to show a "clear or substantial likelihood" that their lawsuit would succeed before he could issue an injunction, and that they had not done so. "The public's interest in orderly elections outweighs the plaintiffs' interest in taking and posting ballot selfies," though they remained free to express their political message through "other powerful means," Castel wrote. Leo Glickman, a lawyer for the voters, said in an interview his clients were disappointed by the ruling and do not plan to appeal it, but will keep pressing their case ahead of the 2017 election cycle. "People should be able to express themselves freely by photographing their marked ballots and putting them on social media feeds," he said, adding that state legislators have expressed interest in having the law repealed.
If we allow this, we open things up so that people can be pressured to vote one way or another. People's votes are their own, they shouldn't have to answer to their bosses or anyone else about who they vote for.
People should be able to express themselves freely by photographing their marked ballots
Just go ahead and say it, "People should be able to provably sell their votes." Because that's what this would allow.
It's all about not letting people sell their vote. letting you take a photo of your ballot so you can prove you voted the way you were paid to vote is illegal.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One of the most important aspects of our voting process is preventing coercion. This is done by making your vote as anonymous as possible. Imagine your boss comes up to you and demands that you vote a certain way or you will lose your job, and tells you to take a ballot selfie to prove it. If a ballot selfie is illegal, then no one can force you to vote that way. While I respect the first amendment argument, protecting voting rights is the more important concern here.
If I'm elected I'll give a snickers bar to everyone who can show they voted for me. Look, me and all my employees voted for you, can I have that trash collection contract?
Reposting at the top level since nearly every other comment is getting this wrong...
Most (all?) jurisdictions allow a voter to request a replacement ballot, in the event of him making an error on the ballot. It would be trivial to take a ballot selfie with one ballot, request a replacement ballot, and vote differently.
This makes ballot selfies ineffective for vote-buying efforts.
The 1st Circuit Court court recognized that the NH law was unconstitutional because it bans protected political speech. NH's US Senator Ayotte is even planning to post her own ballot selfie, in violation of the NH law to prove the point.
NY is in the 2nd Circuit, so they will need their own decision until SCOTUS upholds the 1st Circuit decision.
Regardless, these bans aren't about vote buying - that won't work - they're about preventing people from expressing their political views on social media. Such postings have more benefit for insurgent candidates than establishment candidates, so the establishment is firmly against such efforts.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Boss: it would be in the best interest of your employment to post a selfie of you voting for candidate A.
the difference being you can say you voted for whoever all you want but no one will ever really know if you did. This is important beyond vote buying, i'd be more worried about vote coercion. Sure you can ask for a replacement ballot after taking the shot but opening the door to this kind of pressure is exactly the kind of thing secret ballots are intended to protect against. Fear could prevent people from even thinking of asking for a replacement.
Do you think before you post, or do you just copy lines from the Democratic Party phrase book?
There is no possible way that forbidding a person from photographing his ballot prevents him from voting.
It's no surprise that you support the anti-freedom position of mandatory voting; it fits quite well with your other leftist views.
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So you want to amend the first-amendment eh? Good luck with that.
Because that's the only way mandatory voting would be possible in this country, as such a requirement would constitute government compelled speech, something the first amendment and multiple SCOTUS rulings tend to say no to.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
and just make it a felony to compel someone to reveal their vote. If anyone tries to do it enough times to swing an election it'll be pretty damn obvious when they do and we lock 'em up for 5-10 years for interfering with an election.
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If you want to sell your vote, if you can't provide evidence of your voting the person buying the vote just has to take your word for it. Surely this will reduce the likelihood of someone being willing to pay for it.
Other people may not want to sell their vote, but may be coerced in to it, they may not feel able to take legal action against the coercing party, but not being allowed to take a "selfie" of their vote, gives them an easy out, they can vote how they want and lie about it to the party trying to force their vote.
And on the other side of the argument, what "free speech" benefit do you get from taking a selfie showing your vote, that you don't get from doing it with a mocked-up ballot paper elsewhere? You're still able to express the same sentiment, therefore this law does not infringe on your right to free speech. Remember free speech isn't absolute, you can't say whatever you want wherever you want. Can you go in to a library that has a policy to be quiet and loudly express your support for your favourite political candidate and then complain when you get kicked out?2
Succumbing to voter intimidation is a one-way crime; only the intimidator is a criminal. But in voting for money, both the person buying the vote and the person selling the vote are voluntarily engaging in a criminal activity, subverting a free election.
It's difficult to prove vote buying. It's also difficult for the buyer to have a method to enforce his "contract". By prohibiting ballot-selfies, one enforcement method is being removed. Remember, the primary goal is not to punish vote buyers, but to prevent vote buying.
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... I'm gonna cuss someone out, if they're holding up the voting line, doing the selfie, check, re-selfie a dozen times. /difficulty: lives in L.A.
Nate Silver over at the 538 blog has a good (and depressing if you're a Democrat) article on why early voting doesn't translate into election victories. As for posting your vote it's basically activism. It's not illegal (nor should it be) to say who you voted for (for the record I voted Hilary already). Displaying the ballot is no different, it just makes the point in a more salient fashion.
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Not really, no. There's no compulsion to produce a *valid* ballot. There's no compulsion to do any particular thing, just to show up. It's has as much to do with the 1st amendment as jury duty.
So under your version of compulsory voting... people would be required to show up... but not actually be required cast a valid vote? Why not call it "compulsary show up on election day" instead? What if someone is unable to be at their polling place during early voting or on election day?
Which would seem to be a compulsion... under which enumerated power or court case do you believe the federal or state government has such a power?
Raising an army? Na, that's the justification of the draft.
Establishment of a post office & roads? Not quite.
Punishing of piracy? I dunno.
You mention jury duty... but fail to acknowledge that it, like elections are almost exclusively a state matter.
In order to legally push your compulsory system, you would actually have to pass such a requirement in all 50 states, as again, you are going to have a hard time justifying the compulsion of speech or action under any federal enumerated powers, some states may allow it legally, others not.
Jury duty is little different that conscription for military service (which is constitutional in the US), drafting from a wide range of people so as to attempt to secure the rights of others, and always ideally on a limited basis.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
This controversy is absurd to me. Then again, your whole election system is absurd. It is perplexing that you can't do this right, while Brazil does -- and hell knows we're not often the best example of doing anything right.
So, here's how we do it:
* Voting is mandatory from age 18 to 70. Miss it and you have to pay a small fine.
* The whole country votes at once: always a Sunday, from 8AM to 5PM. Early voting is not possible.
* Voters are assigned the polling place closest to their address, down to the room. Voting elsewhere is not possible.
* Federally issued photo ID must be presented for voting.
* Bringing cameras to the booth is strictly forbidden (you can leave your phone with the poll worker while you vote).
* The whole country uses the same electronic voting machine, a simple and rugged design.
* Polling places are heavily policed, making voter intimidation, canvassing, and machine tampering unlikely.
This system is very efficient, the result is always tallied and announced in a couple of hours after the polling places close.
Circumcision is child abuse.
So under your version of compulsory voting
I love how you talk about it as if its this theoretical system with all sorts of trivial flaws that no one has ever thought about, as opposed to the actual voting system in a number of countries and regions including, for example Australia.
It's a real thing. It doesn't cause the world to fall over. It's called compulsory voting whether you like it or not despite the non-requirement to cast a valid vote. You're not compelling speech, you're compelling voting. It's not speech because no one knows what you said and you don't have to say anything. But you still have to turn up. Like the OP said, do you object to dury duty because you're compelled to speak and render a verdict?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Trump has been campaigning to get some people to change their votes. Apparently several states allow that. But how can you enforce vote secrecy and modifications at the same time?
As for booth selfies, display the voter's choice up until reaching the confirmation screen, then don't display it afterwards.
WTF is unclear about "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"???
The part where taking a photo is free speech. You can still say who you voted for: that's free speech.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well, yes, but it's sort of subjective. I can imagine people wanting to tell their friends "I voted" and "Look how cool I am for voting for this candidate". It's virtue signalling, pure and simple, but that's not necessarily a terrible thing, and it does promote voting.
I largely agree here. Freedom of speech is important but so are free and fair election. This is one of those areas where there's a potential conflict between these two important rights.
That's the moral aspect at least. From a legal point of view, in the US it seems like this is a pure case of freedom of speech, since this is explicitly protected in the constitution and free and fair elections are not.
The law isn't against taking a photo. It's against publishing a photo. That is definitely "the press".
Australian here - compulsory voting works quite well - it's not really compulsory voting, more compulsory attendance; you have to show up but the ballot is secret, so you can just write swear words on it and draw rude pictures if you want - and some do.
But it has a huge effect on the political discourse - because parties don't need to 'get the vote out', politics becomes largely a squabble over the middle ground, and extremists on either side don't tend to do so well. Our politicians are usually pretty boring compared to overseas. Given all the other things we have to do as part of society, showing up every few years to vote seems a fairly small price to pay to keep democratic government ticking over.
Not sure how it would play elsewhere, but it works well for us... as does the whole preferential voting system; you can put your least disliked major party second last, and vote for other people first without 'wasting' your vote.
Anyway, back on topic: the selfie thing is a problem, as it breaks the whole secret ballot shtick. I can see the free speech argument, but there's a reason for secret ballots; without them you can get intimidation, coercion, people selling votes etc... sometimes I think we forget that these things were hard fought for a long time ago, and they shouldn't be given up without a lot of careful thought...
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
It's not only the sale of votes, it's also voter intimidation.
http://www.demos.org/publicati...
Just another day in Paradise
The law should prevent TAKING the photograph - not SHARING a photograph that you already took. A law preventing people from sharing the photo would (arguably) be a violation of free speech...and would be blown away as unconstitutional. A law preventing people from taking photographs inside the polling station would be no different than the laws preventing you from taking photos during a trial or on a military base - no different than the copyright laws - no different than the child pornography laws. All of those limit your right to take a photograph - and the constitution says nothing about any special rights in that regard.
If someone were to take a photo of their ballot (illegally) and share it on Facebook - the crime would be of having taken the photo - not of sharing it. Sharing it would be evidence that you broke the law by taking the selfie in the first place...so making it illegal to take the photo would be a strong disincentive to share it if you did.
We don't have to make this any harder than it already is. "No Photography within the bounds of a polling station" is a perfectly good law with ZERO downsides.
www.sjbaker.org
In the US, about half the populace isn't at all interested in politics and political affairs. They spend their time on other things, so they don't know who the current vice president is or who the incumbent governor is. This isn't necessarily *bad*; maybe they are spending their time looking for a cancer cure or feeding homeless people. In any event, they haven't paid any attention to politics and don't know who the governor is, and they couldn't name a single treaty signed in the last ten years. Knowing nothing about politics, economics, foreign affairs, etc, they end up supporting a reality TV star or something.
It seems to me there are two general ways to do it:
A) Have the president chosen by people basing their decision on "I saw a commercial once" or based purely on race and gender.
B) Have the president chosen by people who are interested enough to learn a bit about the candidates and the issues, and make the effort to show up on election day.
It would seem, from my perspective, that compulsory voting means "people who have no interest in, and no knowledge of the issues, who don't even want to vote, must flip a coin and choose a candiate- and those clueless disinterested votes count just as much as votes from people who researched the issues". That seems like a TERRIBLE idea. Is it that different in Australia? Do people actually know anything about the issues and the candidates, or is it purely a battle of the 2-second sound clips, each candidate fighting for the 50% of voters who haven't a clue?
Here, it's popular to say "voting is important. I won't tell you who to vote for, but it's critical that you go vote." I say the opposite. I say "if you don't know who the vice president is, if you'd rather play video games than learn the name of your governor, you don't need to select the next governor. Go ahead and play video games on Tuesday. You can leave the voting to people who care."
You have it backwards. You can't ban the posting of the photo without infringing the constitutional right to free speech. You CAN ban the talking of the photo in the first place by the simple expedient of banning the use of cameras in the polling station. We already ban photography in courts and on military bases and in some other government facilities. The polling station is no different in principle to those other places. It's ridiculously easy (and constitutional) to ban the use of cameras in polling stations - it would be wildly unconstitutional to ban the sharing of those photos.
www.sjbaker.org
So, this is easy. We just have to turn this over to the public sector. We pay Disney a small fee to put a picture of Mickey Mouse on every ballot paper. If people photograph it and post the pictures then Disney can sue the pants off them for copyright violation.
Problem solved - and as a plus we can subtly reinforce the idea that voting for Mickey Mouse as a write-in candidate might be a better idea than any of the other choices!
www.sjbaker.org
Section 17-130 of NY Code:
9. Having lawfully entered a voting booth with a voter, requests,
persuades or induces such voter to vote any particular ballot or for any
particular candidate, or makes or keeps any memorandum of anything
occurring within the booth, or directly or indirectly, reveals to
another the name of any candidate voted for by such voter; or,
10. Shows his ballot after it is prepared for voting, to any person so
as to reveal the contents, or solicits a voter to show the same; or,
11. Places any mark upon his ballot, or does any other act in
connection with his ballot with the intent that it may be identified as
the one voted by him; or,
Sharing the photo violates 10-11. It's not "the press" if you take the photo home to show a friend or spouse or employer. Taking the photo holds an inherent risk of violating 10-11, because someday someone might see it.
Photography isn't explicitly mentioned at all. It's about sharing the direct contents of your marked ballot.
There are lots of kinds of speech that is illegal. Libel being one. Perjury another. Voting is freedom of speech and if that can be coerced by being allowed to share a ballot, then that freedom of speech should be protected at a greater cost.
IMHO, this law, the lawsuit, and the ballot selfie itself are pointless distractions. These days, everyone know who the political fanboys/fangirls are going to vote for so the selfie is old news. Voter ID, on the other hand, is a worthwhile endeavor if you can find a way to convince people that a free government-issued ID is not a poll tax. My question is how the hell you function in life without a photo ID these days.
Selfies are for narcissists.
We ALREADY have people who don't know who the vice president is voting. In 2008, around half of Obama*voters* didn't know who Dick Cheney was (he was the vice president). We say "you must vote" and many do. Lacking any relevant information, they fall back to choosing based on skin complexion, gender, or other irrelevant "flip a coin" things. I wouldn't be suprised if half of Trump and Clinton voters can't name the current vice president, or their governor.
Again, there's nothing WRONG with not knowing who your governor is- maybe you have more important things to worry about. However, you wouldn't want someone who doesn't know what Windows is to select a computer for you; you wouldn't choose a car based on suggestions from a guy who hasn't heard of Toyota or Ford. Similarly, those who don't know who Mike Pence is probably shouldn't be voting for him or against him.
This law does not abridge the freedom of speech or the press.
Even with this law, you are still allowed to publish a photograph of a marked ballot. The government is not doing anything to interfere with that. All they're saying, is that you can't take the photograph at the voting place.
You can take your photo in front of a waving American flag, while a marine salutes a passing eagle, from atop of a majestic purple mountain overlooking a plain of wheat. You can take your photo in front of a burning cross, where a close view of the ballot reveals the circles are filled with little swastikas. You can take the photo in your special effects studio, showing Neal Armstrong placing your ballot on a pole on the moon. You can take the photo in a meticulously-detailed Hollywood set that was made to look exactly like your neighborhood highschool gym where the actual voting happens, with a bunch of extras standing in lines waiting to "vote" in the background. You can fake your photo with CGI. Whatever speech you want to make, won't be interfered with. Any political statement that you can possibly imagine, remains legal and completely unthreatened by this law.
The only catch, is that everyone will know that your speech was merely your speech, that it wasn't necessarily a depiction of objective truth. But that's the nature of all speech anyway, so it's not even a real "catch." Truth is not expression: that's why nobody can copyright facts themselves.
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. Damn-fucking right! *high five* If anyone ever tries to shut you up, all Americans agree to stand by your side and work with you, in killing the offender and putting his head on a pike as a warning to other would-be tyrants.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Funny, the reality of the situation is votes for Clinton are already being flipped to Trump.
Voters have also been reporting Trump-to-Clinton flips in several states, and several locations in some of them, since early voting started.
(This is the first time I've seen it alleged to go the other way. Maybe the Clinton camp was getting ready to challenge a loss after the Trump polling spike?)
Of course, if you Google for "vote flipping", the only things you find in the first couple pages are the Clinton-to-Trump report and election official denials of the Trump-to-Clinton claims.
The latter are phrased as if they were just Trump's tweet, too. The several news reports of people reporting them seem to be conveniently absent.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"fuck you, prole, that's why"
free speech vs safe elections. It's easy to get that balance. My boss forces me to vote Trump. So what, it's 1 vote. My boss forces 20,000 employees to vote Trump. Now we're talking. But now there's 20,000 people who can give witness to his crime. I'm not legal expert, but I think it'd be really, really hard to commit a crime with 20,000 witnesses.
From there just run up the penalties and throw a few folks behind bars. Problem solved.
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they weren't created to prevent voter intimidation. There's plenty of other laws for that. They were created to prevent young activists from sharing their voting preferences in a meaningful way and thereby swinging the election to the left (which is what the sorts of young people who take ballot selfies are likely to be since they're too young to have enough property yet to fear losing it).
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This is why we need mandatory voting. You can't suppress the vote when it's required.
I disagree very strongly with the concept of mandatory voting. If someone cannot be bothered to exercise their right to vote without the threat of legal penalties how in the hell do you expect them to make an informed decision?
I'm completely in favor of removing any barriers to voting that people may face, even if they'll vote for what I view as the completely wrong choices but there's no reason to encourage mindless voting.
Voting is hard, at least for me. My ballot is only about 1/3 filled out right now because I haven't researched all the amendments and candidates that are on my ballot. I'm not going to vote party line. I don't do that.
And there are about 15 judges on my ballot that I know absolutely nothing about other than that they are already judges. Shall I vote Yes to retain them as judges?
I don't know. I'll Google all of them and unless something really stands out about them either favorably or unfavorably I'm not going to have enough information to go on. I'm not going to research all the cases that were presented to them and read their decisions. Ain't nobody got time for that. There's a good chance I'll just abstain from voting for or against them retaining their seats because I really cannot make an informed decision in most cases.
I've already filled in the circle next to my choice for President and I've already voted against my Congressman (although in truth, I hope he wins - and he will), but I'm unsure about who to vote for as my Senator and a couple of state legislators.
I anticipate I'll spend most of Monday researching candidates and issues that I haven't yet decided on.
And will I do it justice? Will I actually comprehend the issues well enough to make the best choices? Shall I go with my grandfather's philosophy which was to just vote "no" if there's any doubt? Well, vote "no" and vote Republican I think was his philosophy, but I've already voted for a Libertarian, a Republican and a Democrat and I've also voted for one state Amendment and against another.
I encourage everyone to stay home on election day, but I definitely won't stand in your way if you want to vote. It's your right to vote, but if you don't care enough to get off the couch and do it, it's probably best that you don't.
So under your version of compulsory voting... people would be required to show up... but not actually be required cast a valid vote? Why not call it "compulsory show up on election day" instead? What if someone is unable to be at their polling place during early voting or on election day?
There would be nothing to prevent the person from casting a spoiled ballot.
Which would seem to be a compulsion... under which enumerated power or court case do you believe the federal or state government has such a power?
...
You mention jury duty... but fail to acknowledge that it, like elections are almost exclusively a state matter.
In order to legally push your compulsory system, you would actually have to pass such a requirement in all 50 states, as again, you are going to have a hard time justifying the compulsion of speech or action under any federal enumerated powers, some states may allow it legally, others not.
Jury duty is little different that conscription for military service (which is constitutional in the US), drafting from a wide range of people so as to attempt to secure the rights of others, and always ideally on a limited basis.
Jury duty does seem like the closest match. What do the feds do when they need a jury?
(b) Any person summoned pursuant to subsection (a) of this section who fails to appear as directed shall be ordered by the district court forthwith to appear and show cause for his failure to comply with the summons. Any person who fails to appear pursuant to such order or who fails to show good cause for noncompliance with the summons may be fined not more than $1,000, imprisoned not more than three days, ordered to perform community service, or any combination thereof. Any person who willfully misrepresents a material fact on a juror qualification form for the purpose of avoiding or securing service as a juror may be fined not more than $1,000, imprisoned not more than three days, ordered to perform community service, or any combination thereof.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...