Judge Refuses To Block New York 'Ballot Selfie' Law (reuters.com) 248
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putting them on social media feeds," he said, adding that state legislators have expressed interest in having the law repealed.
Not a good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not a good idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. This is an appalling example of thoughtlessness and idiocy that endangers democracy and clean elections.
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How is it worse than postal and proxy votes? Or are you against those as well?
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Actually, this is a good reason to be against the movement to unlimited postal and proxy votes that's so popular right now. They used to be tightly regulated just because of this concern.
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I voted in union elections and there was a ballot box by every row in the hall. You filled out your ballot in your seat then walked up and inserted it into the ballot box.
Tell me, if you were unhappy with the leadership, who could hurt you by not calling your name during shape-up (when you get called for a job) how would you vote?
Would YOU be comfortable in that scenario.
And don't forget union dues, which are forcibly pulled from your paycheck, and th
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Exactly. Why can't they just take selfies at the booth or at the polling station? Hell, they can even say "Look at me! I made a difference by voting for the lesser of 2 evils!" The whole point is to not show your marked ballot so that it remains a secret. These people can still make the exact same statement without showing a marked ballot.
They won't figure it out until someone doxes them now that they're in the court system and harasses them over their votes. Now that would be ironic end to this.
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Just because I take a selfie with a ballot marked for Clinton, #SMOD2016, Trump or Baba Booey doesn't actually show a cast ballot for that name. Easy enough for online virtual signaling or paid for votes to take a ballot, mark it in the desired way, take the photo, then market it again and return to an election official for a new ballot to replace the spoiled one.
Re:Not a good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
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But that can't happen, because right after you take your picture, you can spoil the ballot and get another one.
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If it is legally permissible to prove, through photographic evidence, who exactly they supported, then it is entirely possible for people to intimidate someone else into providing such proof, because you have absolutely zero proof that they are taking that photo entirely of their own volition, and with no influence from anyone who wants to know how that person voted.
So you are saying because it is against the law it can be stopped? The law isn't preventing the scenario you describe in any meaningful and practical way. People can secretly take pictures of their ballots and present those pictures secretly to a third party without much fear of getting caught. Most voting booths are design to conceal a persons choices which would also conceal whether they take a picture of the ballot or not. So the only thing the law is really preventing is the voluntary public disclos
You can do the opposite (Score:3)
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It already is.
http://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/... [acslaw.org]
Not really (Score:2)
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
The laws were created to prevent vote buying and intimidation. If you had to prove to someone how you voted, this would be one way to do so. Making it illegal is the only logical way to prevent that.
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If this is the case, should we not ban mail-in ballots as well?
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Yes, except in special cases (military for example)
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Ballot selfies are not a problem, because after you take the picture, you can spoil the ballot and get another one. Unless you are assuming you are being accompanied to the poll, I don't think it's a problem.
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On the other hand, couldn't absentee ballots lead to the same sort of thing?
Though banning absentee ballots could completely lock some people out of the democratic process.
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This.
"Show me a selfie of your vote for Dr. Evil or else!"
End of discussion.
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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.
And if we prohibit people from recording their own votes by their own choice then we are preventing people the one means at their disposal to prevent wholesale election fraud. Forget the 'hey I want to show my support' aspect. We have a system that totally relies on trusting a small number of people to not conspire to change the voting results as they see fit. If trust breaks down, as it has broken down today and will break down from time to time, then we need to give people the option of recording a cop
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It is hard to get too worked up over this. It isn't a huge infringement of our rights to regulate photography in a polling place. We already ban people from putting campaign signs and handing out voter guides within a certain distance of the polling place as it is.
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This isn't the hill to die on screaming for freedom.
Re: Not a good idea... (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, the reality of the situation is votes for Clinton are already being flipped to Trump [latesteconomynews.org].
Not to mention Trump supporters committing voter fraud [desmoinesregister.com].
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You forget that in America, truth is not determined by facts but rather by whatever is repeated the most often and the loudest.
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Not to mention Trump supporters committing voter fraud [desmoinesregister.com].
The story mentions 3 voter fraud suspects, but only gives details for one. I wonder if the other 2 were Shillary supporters. I guess voter fraud only news worthy if it's done by Republicans.
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Here's a better article, with photographs of the vote fraudster actually caucusing for Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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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.
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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.
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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 be
Re:On the plus side nobody's allowing it (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:On the plus side nobody's allowing it (Score:4, Informative)
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...
Do Australians know who the incumbent is? (Score:2)
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
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If you can choose to take it, you can be forced to "choose" to take it.
Stupid. (Score:2)
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.
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Some states allow you to vote more than once. They only take your latest vote. In those states taking a photo of a ballot paper doesn't prove who you voted for.
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Why even risk it?
Seriously, why is it so much to ask that people not make personally identifiable ballots?
If you don't allow ballot selfies, then you don't have to worry about people buying/coercing votes, people trying to fake who they voted for, dealing with spoiled ballots/revotes, or any accusations or legal complications that might arise.
Just don't fucking allow it. Problem avoided!
=Smidge=
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Some states allow you to vote more than once. They only take your latest vote. In those states taking a photo of a ballot paper doesn't prove who you voted for.
Link? Google only gave me references to it being illegal.
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so you can prove you voted the way you were paid to vote
Since every jurisdiction that I've heard of allows you to request a replacement ballot, only a fool would pay for a picture of a marked ballot.
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so you can prove you voted the way you were paid to vote
Since every jurisdiction that I've heard of allows you to request a replacement ballot, only a fool would pay for a picture of a marked ballot.
I think you underestimate how many fools there are. How many people know they can get a replacement ballot? How many people will just do what they are asked when there is money involved?
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You can tell if someone gets a replacement ballot.
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But should it be--the picture part, I mean.
The argument is that the only reason you would take a photograph of yourself and your ballot, pay for processing the film, etc. is if you were being paid to do so. That might have been true back in the days of brownie cameras. But here in the 21st century, I can walk into a voting booth with a tiny video camera in my glasses that's linked to an app on the phone that will upload the video of me voting for whoever I was told to vote for. Poll workers would have no
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You're making a false equivalence. You're also coming up with an obscure edge case in order to prevent the usual case of abuse. Most people are now walking around with cameras. Just because you could have snuck a camera into the polling booth before doesn't change the fact that previously it was rare and now it was common.
The problem is that photographs of ballot papers make selling votes much easier and now most people have the means to do that easily. No one is worried about an army of vote sellers armed
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There is no identification information on a ballot. How do you prove it was your ballot that was changed?
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My ballot has an ID and a stub I tore off.
I can call in and ensure that my ballot was received and counted. I don't know if there's a way to determine if it was counted correctly.
If ballots were unreadable for whatever reason but the IDs on there were intact, they could post a list of those IDs and let people with the stubs reclaim and refill their ballots for recounting.
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Well, about $7B was spent by the candidates in 2012. There were 126M voters that year. You could draw multiple conclusions, but would likely want to get more info on the swing states and only influence voters there.
Why this law exists (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Asking you to vote for someone is illegal. So if someone can ask you to vote for someone, they can as well ask you to take a picture (which is illegal too). Oh, wait, in that case you are in trouble too so you can't even sue your boss later !
That law makes really no sense to me.
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Uhh.. what?
asking for anyone to vote for anyone or anything is NOT illegal. That's literally how election campaigns work; they ask you to vote for them.
REQUIRING someone to vote for something is illegal. However your boss could "recommend" you vote one way; and lay you off when you post a photo of yourself having voted differently "for unrelated reasons". Though you MAY have a case against them; best of luck proving it in court.
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Don't be silly. That's what elections are all about.
It's illegal to offer certain varieties of inducements to vote in a certain way, such as threats of violence or firing, or promises of individual payments. Removing mechanisms that make vote-buying and voter intimidation possible is a good thing.
The pity is, it's not illegal to say "If elected, I'll take every penny from people who earn over $10,000 a year and give it to people who don't earn that much."
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How about mail-in ballots? How do we know even who is filling it out? If mail-in ballots are OK, why is a selfie such a big deal?
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Mail in ballots are not OK. So many people see the obvious problems with ballot selfies, but don't have any concern for mail in ballots.
Pieces of paper in a locked box. At the end of the night, the old ladies of the neighborhood count each ballot one by one in front of everybody. It works, it can't be hacked. Parents can't vote for their kids. It's just a bit slower and less convenient.
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Yeah - mail-in ballots are a tremendous concern. This is concern is reflected in the crazy-quilt set of laws across the USA. Some US states allow postal voting to anyone who requests it without even asking for a reason. Oregon, Washington and Colorado *only* have postal voting (although you can drop your vote off at the post office on the day of the election...so it's not exactly "posted"). Some states only allow it for specific cases such as disability. Others say that those are the criteria but don't
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You're right, we should make guns illegal to stop murder. It's incredible how slashdot flip flops on issues of the constitution. I have a better idea, why not introduce wrongful dismissal laws like most of the rest of the west if your worried about your boss coercing you and requiring a selfie.
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You're getting confused over the "right to free speech" here. Nobody is trying to prevent people from displaying a legally taken photograph - posting it on facebook or whatever...banning *THAT* would be a violation of the freedom of speech. What they seek here is to make it illegal to take the photo in the first place. There is no constitutional right to take a photograph or to copy a document - and preventing people from doing that happens all the time (eg with copyright law, child pornography laws, s
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Really?
Boss: you will vote for X or you are fired.
Me: It is illegal to force me!
Boss: I know. And on top of it, you will take a ballot selfie.
Me: But that's illegal too!
Boss: Do I look like I give a shit?
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I agree - the concept of a secret ballot is critical to fair and independent elections.
The right to free speech gives you the right to say "I voted for candidate A" without impediment. Banning cameras inside the voting booth doesn't impede that right in any way. The "right to free speech" isn't "the right to take photographs" - although it arguably is "the right to display photographs that you've taken". We could however, make the voting form, or the display on the voting machine be a copyrighted work -
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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.
How does the law in any way prevent what you describe? It doesn't. The coercion is already illegal, so why wouldn't it already prevent what you describe... secrecy. Ballot picture laws don't actually physically stop people from taking pictures of ballots and secretly sharing those with a single person, they just make it illegal to do so. Given a ballot booth, sometimes with a curtain, and a small camera such as those on every cell phone then there is very little likelihood of getting caught taking a pic
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There are many things that can be said that do not have 1st amendment protection. Military secrets, death threats, among many others.
There is only one fundamental right, the right of an innocent person not to be killed, and it applies only against those who would kill him. Everything else derives from that in a reasoned hierarchy.
Protecting the secrecy of voting in every practical way is important. Some people who win elections are capable of doing immense damage, and protecting voters from such people is f
Replacement Ballots (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [arstechnica.com] that the NH law was unconstitutional because it bans protected political speech. NH's US
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I think the more compelling argument is that in the grand scheme (at least for anything but local elections), vote buying is a very bad investment, which you make reference to. This isn't an easy case though. There are reasonable arguments on both sides. However:
Is not one of them.
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You're assuming most people would take the extra step of asking for a replacement ballot. In a situation where it is the same amount of effort to vote for candidate A vs. B (anonymous voting) people will are more likely to vote for who they wish. This is in contrast to a situation where their boss expects a selfie, and in order for that person to "vote their conscience" and get a replacement ballot requires extra effort (regardless of how small), most people won't take that minor step. The average person te
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Plus (in principle) your boss could station someone inside the polling booth and fire any employees who requested a replacement ballot after taking their obligatory corporate selfie.
The ability to request a replacement is no guarantee of secrecy at all.
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Filling out a ballot, photographing, getting a second ballot and filling it out is a lot of work for the piddling amount a vote purchase is likely to pay. The person who'd sell his vote is immoral, and is also likely lazy (being moral takes extra effort.) Making vote buying more difficult is a worthwhile goal.
Kelly Ayotte is not a deep thinker. She has already sacrificed many of the values and positions on which she was first elected. If she is re-elected, it's only because her opponent is a vicious flaming
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You can tell if someone gets a new ballot. That isn't secret.
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Couldn't you have a thug watch for people requesting replacement ballots at the polling station? Make it known that anyone who's on the list of targeted voters will get 'roughed up' on the assumption that their selfie was fraudulent? Best they could do then is spoil their ballot but cast it anyway.
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The 1st Circuit Court court recognized that the NH law was unconstitutional because it bans protected political speech.
That's a weird-ass definition of speech, because there is no law preventing you saying who you voted for. Taking a photo in a specific place is even less speech than libelling someone and the latter isn't legal either.
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.
Bullshit. You can s
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These laws are in place for a reason. We know the history we don't need to repeat it. These bans a
Re: Replacement Ballots (Score:3)
If you're in a public place you have no excpectation of privacy in the US. A voting booth is an exception to that, though.
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Privacy only protects from the photo being taken. If the photo is displayed/distributed, their personal/privacy rights are violated. This is why when you buy tickets to a theme park (for one example), there is a clause in the terms of the agreement giving them the right to use photos of you in their promotional materials.
Why is this a controversy at all? (Score:2)
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.
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I like this system. A lot. I'd amend it with:
* Make voting day an official federal holiday. (Then we can keep the 2nd Tuesday in November date)
* Use paper ballots with an electronic scanner for tallying. (best of both worlds)
* Longer hours for voting. Maybe 7am to 6pm.
* No absentee or mail-in votes, at all.
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2. There is no federally issued or even state issue (to my knowledge) photo ID in the US. This is the biggest reason voter photo ID laws are regularly overturned as a form of voter suppression. If the government either at the state or federal level had a system for the distribution of free of charge photo IDs, these laws would be okay. However in this grand old free country of ours no such thing exists. You must pay for a driver's license and or state ID or a federally issued passport. Many low income individuals have no need for these and in many cases could not afford one if they wanted it. If the government makes getting a passport as free and easy as your social security card, which as it happens is an acceptable form of non-photo ID for voting, then this issue would be different.
To the best of my knowledge, every state that currently requires and ID to vote (like Texas) has a free state photo ID available.(Free Texas ID: http://www.dps.texas.gov/drive... [texas.gov] )
In the past, these free IDs have not been adequate to counter the cries of 'voter suppression' that have often managed to get voter ID laws removed.
Put a picture of Mickey Mouse on the ballot paper. (Score:2)
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!
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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 fr
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What would you be happy with receiving as compensation for you vote?
"This is a nice job you've got here. Would be a shame if I had to.. fire you."
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I've never had a job that would be worth keeping under that kind of threat. I'd tell him to stick it up his ass after reported him to the FBI. Might even have a recording of him saying it.
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Not all of us live in states where recording that conversation is legal. Here it would be a felony and inadmissible at trial.
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There's no freedom of speech issue. People are free to draw up a fake ballot and take a picture if they want.
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Last presidential election, a large number of districts ran out of ballots due to voter turnout being far higher than expected. Running out of ballots can swing an election, because what time you can make it to the polling booth is largely related to your socioeconomic situation.
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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 preven
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It's not only the sale of votes, it's also voter intimidation.
http://www.demos.org/publicati... [demos.org]
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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. A
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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.
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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 p