Want to Restore Election Integrity? End the Secret Ballot

 

Ninth in a series

Vote fraud is an issue that will never go away, and for good reason--there's plenty of vote fraud: from both parties, in virtually any year, in virtually any election.  The Heritage Foundation provides a good resource here.  So what to do?  Make a tight linkage between the voter and the vote.  That might seem controversial, in light of the general sense that the ballot should be secret.  But let's ask ourselves: Do most people wish to let you know for whom they voted?  Sure.  And can big data companies (Silicon Valley, credit card cos, cell phone providers) already pretty much intuit how you voted?  Sure.  And what of the NSA?  Ditto.   So anybody who really wants to know, already knows.   So the secret ballot provides the space for fraud, more than it provides the sanctity of privacy.   And of course, Republicans, notably, are generally eager to see some sort of mandatory ID check for voting.  We can observe: the more the verification, the more the likelihood that voting intention will be known. 

With these realities in mind, I published this for The Daily Caller in January 2023. 

There's no need to mandatorily end the secret ballot.  We can leave the question to the discretion of each voter. However, it must be said that if the ballot is anonymous, then it can't be audited.   In the final analysis--or in any sort of recount--there needs to be a firm linkage: the voter and the vote.  If there isn't, then anything can happen. 

Still, as for your voting intention, you might expect to have a right to privacy.  In theory.  But here’s the thing: If you’re online, you don’t in practice.   Back in 1999, Scott McNealy, then-CEO of Sun Microsystems, told reporters that concerns over privacy were a “red herring”—that is, a fake thing to worry about. “You have zero privacy,”  McNealy advised, “Get over it.” McNealy’s words caused a storm, but let’s ask ourselves: Has the situation gotten better in the past quarter-century?  Have the algorithms gotten smarter?  Does Google know what you’re looking for as soon as you start typing?  Does Siri or Amazon Echo seem to be listening, even when you haven’t asked it to?  Are you relying on GPS and a mapping app to guide you places?  If so, then you’re an open book. 

To be sure, there are plenty of apps that help with privacy.   And millions of Americans use these, often with good success.  But here’s the thing: They still know all about you.  Between the government—those 87,000 new IRS agents will be put to good use—the banks, credit card companies, social media companies, and the app makers themselves, They (with a capital “T”) keep close tabs on all of us.  So if we vote, They can probably figure out who we voted for.  

And of course, with mail-in ballots, it’s not hard to know who voted for whom—the authorities can just look at the return address, even if they might have to peek a bit to see the “X.” 

So it’s a paradoxical situation: They know who we voted for, but we can’t prove who we voted for, because the balloting itself is officially anonymous.  So maybe They are cheating, but unless we can catch them in the act, we can’t prove it.  It’s in that gap—when the cat’s away—that the vote-fraud mice can play.  To put the matter even more bluntly, if the voter doesn’t stand by his or her vote, someone else might wish to stand there, in his or her stead.