A suggestion about voting

from Brett James.

“Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity” - Lord Acton

There’s no secret in who I’m going to vote for. I’m open with my friends about my politics, and they are with me. And even if you don’t know me, you only need to drive by my house around election time: the posters and signs that litter my yard will give anyone a pretty complete picture of what will get marked, stamped, or punched once I’m behind the poll’s curtain. So while I do appreciate the privacy, I see very little reason why my voting should be kept anonymous, or my ballot a secret.

I’ve been voting for a couple decades and, until recently, I’ve never worried that my vote was being kept a secret. After all, voting is a routine, a ceremony. The practices surrounding voting have been in place longer than I’ve been alive, longer than my father or his father. In other words, the process is hallowed by tradition; its methods proven correct through the test of time.

I was first introduced to the ritual of voting just a few days after I turned eighteen. In my experience, it goes something like this: I, the voter, arrive at a neutral place, like a school or a library. Inside, a sweet, grandmotherly woman spends just about a minute finding my name on her clean, freshly printed list. She inspects my driver’s license through reading glasses, crosses out my name and hands me my ballot—a somewhat unassuming piece of paper that has more in common with a standardized test than the hallmark of a free country.

I’m sent off with a kindly smile, the woman firm in the belief that I would be voting my conscience and, in no uncertain terms, in the best interest of senior citizens. Next I stand in a short line, step into the booth, and pull the blue curtains behind me. There, safe, alone, I try to remember which town council member had irritated me so much last month and to recognize the name of any of the district attorney hopefuls on the list. At that moment, I am happy no one can see me—more for what I don’t know than I what I do: Presidents, Congressmen, and Governors, of these I have made my choice long ago. I almost wish I had an audience to see the decisiveness with which I make those choices.

When I am done making all my marks—a mix of heartfelt declaration and a bit of guesswork—I drop the ballot in the secure box and leave. I feel good: I have done my part for my country. Someone hands me a little “I Voted” sticker so I can show off how civic-minded I am.

The trouble is, from this moment onward, I have lost the power over my vote. From this point onward, because my name isn’t on the ballot, no one could ever pick up that piece of paper and confirm that it was indeed me who had filled in that ballot. In fact, I don’t imagine I could even pick my own ballot out if it was placed right in front of me. This is the danger of voting anonymously. From here on out, my vote depends on the people who will open the box, and all the people who are around that box before that happens.

And even after that, it’s not safe. After being counted, my vote becomes just a small part of a very large number. Numbers that are so easy to change. 

As the system stands, you have no way of going back to check that the system has done its job. This creates a large, dark place where people can take advantage. It’s the same setup as when you check a bag at the airport.

Now I’m not saying people do take advantage of my vote. I personally put a lot of faith in my fellow citizens. But I’m saying they could if they wanted to, and this is a big enough problem to consider changing the whole system.

 

The practice of anonymous voting, or ‘secret ballot’ as it used to be called, came about somewhere in the mid-eighteen hundreds—in Australia of all places. They felt that the right to vote must be protected from ‘the corruption of the wealthy or the violence of the powerful.’ In other words, with anonymous voting, no one would try to bribe you because you could take their money and still vote for whomever you wanted. And no band of thugs could hope to threaten you, because they wouldn’t know what you did behind the curtain. The secret ballot was a big hit, and it was adopted by the United States for the 1892 election (which Grover Cleveland won.)

Now a hundred years ago, America was a pretty different place. These days, I don’t worry about being beaten, bribed, or anything worse than being frowned at by old ladies who think I might be voting their social security away. What I, and a growing number of people, fear is the exact opposite: We fear the corruption is happening behind the curtain, and we see that a far greater threat in anonymous voting than in open elections.

I can trace this change back to the year 2000. Around that time there was a rather serious investigation into the election. And it was concluded only because the Supreme Court ordered the recount unconstitutional, not because any real answer was discovered.

Back then, I didn’t get too upset about it. Of course, like so many other people, I had little idea how much turmoil was ahead. And I thought, well, maybe the count got fudged a little, but my fears were small and my trust of my fellow man was grand. Most of all, I didn’t want to be a sore loser. It didn’t occur to me then that the election—that any election—was or even could be stolen. To me, such concerns belonged to days past, when unions were a corrupt front for the mafia and dead people in Chicago voted eight times. That is not in my America, I declared. We the people worked those troubles out long ago.

But have we? It is now six years later and some people still feel the election was stolen. In fact, there seem to be more people who now feel that way than did back in 2000. To make it worse, they suspect the 2004 election as well, and are quite nervous about what’s going to happen in a few days—not that their candidates aren’t going to win, but that their winning candidates aren’t going to be allowed to serve.

Now this is a little creepy. If this were a small handful of people, I could discount it as a little bit of paranoia, or even sour grapes. But this has become a country-wide phenomenon. People are standing up and yelling that the numbers simply don’t add up. And when you consider the bold and aggressive way our current leaders are shifting foreign policy, the idea that they might not represent the majority of this country is a scary concept—more dangerous to this country than any act of terrorism. Indeed, what is worse than to discover you’ve been betrayed by someone who you thought was on your side? There is a reason why treason is punishable by death, putting it in the same class as cold-blooded murder.

 

Simply put, my peace of mind about my guy losing in the last two elections depends on the belief that, no matter what I think, the majority of my fellow citizens found reason to put their faith in the men and women who now run this country. And my job is not to curse our leaders, or the other voters, but to convince those who don’t agree with me otherwise.

But if the voting system is broken—if more American citizens voted against the current administration than for it but the choice was not heeded—then America faces its greatest threat since red-coated Hessians wintered in New York. And this isn’t just about a battle for representation that happened two-hundred years ago. Consider the men and women of our military today, sent away from their families for so long, and so many of them killed or maimed for life. They did and do this for their country, for me, for you, for us. Now imagine if the people who sent them there were not our elected officials.

I’m not saying this is what has happened. I’m saying a lot of people in this country are living in doubt, and that’s both unnecessary and unacceptable. 

If the winners really are the winners—and the losers really are the losers—there is little to lose in opening the system up. And everything to gain: nothing is more important to national security than having the people of a country trust their government.

So I propose the following new freedom for the American people: The freedom to vote openly. I’m not trying to force anyone, you can still vote anonymously if you prefer. But we should have the choice to attach our name to our own ballot, and to let our vote become a matter of public record.

If even a small percentage of the population engages in open voting, it gives us a much clearer—and more reassuring—picture of what happened in any given election.

 

The only other option is to keep fearing the worst.