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posted by takyon on Monday August 24 2015, @11:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the ballot-selfie-stick-ban dept.

A federal judge recently ruled that banning photos of ballots was unconstitutional:

The ruling clears the way for New Hampshire voters to post their ballot selfies during the first-in-the-nation presidential primaries early next year.

New Hampshire's ban went into effect September 2014 and made it illegal for anyone to post a photo of a marked ballot and share it on social media. The violation was punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.

[...] Mashable's Juana Summers adds that the judge found "there was no evidence that vote-buying or voter coercion were current problems in New Hampshire."

This seems like an interesting legal question, with good arguments on both sides:
- For the ban: If a photograph of a marked ballot is taken from the voting booth, then the voter can verify their vote with an interested third party, including those that would seek to purchase or coerce their vote.
- Against the ban: Such a photograph is protected free speech, and thus cannot be legally banned.

What do Soylentils think about this?


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  • (Score: 2) by RedBear on Tuesday August 25 2015, @02:46AM

    by RedBear (1734) on Tuesday August 25 2015, @02:46AM (#227366)

    In a way it's kind of unfortunate that there has been so little actual violence or corruption related to American voting events in recent memory that many people can't really comprehend why voting is secret in the first place. It's a free, civilized, democratic country, right? So why does my vote need to be kept secret?

    Beyond the relatively iffy possibility of paid voter fraud (you'd need a video of the whole process to verify the voter didn't just take a picture and then ask for a new ballot so they could vote differently) there is the much more real specter of retaliation. Even if you're registered Non-Partisan, once you have people start posting their votes in public you run into the possibility that Those Who Make Lists will put people on lists for many different potential forms of retaliation from job loss or job discrimination to widespread execution/extermination/purging. How could they have had the massacre of the Huguenots so easily if no one had known for sure who was a Huguenot and who wasn't? If this doesn't seem relevant to American politics you're just not using your imagination.

    There is only mention of selfies, but of course if you're using a camera in a polling place there is always the possibility of using the camera to record someone else's vote. Voting is the core of the democratic process. The most reliable way to keep it safe from tampering and possible repercussions of any given person voting the "wrong" way according to any other given person (or group) is to make the use of visual recording devices illegal within the confines of the polling area, and make it illegal to post publicly any visual record of anyone's vote, even if it's supposedly your own.

    I'm normally firmly on the "there is NO good reason for censorship" side of things, no matter the circumstances. But this one has me leaning strongly toward just a smidgen of censorship. If you want to go around telling everyone how you voted, well, that's your problem, it's protected speech and it's totally unverifiable. But we have many good, democratic reasons to keep actual visually-documented or otherwise verifiable voting records under the hat.

    On the other hand I guess it could be argued that this is one of those "protecting people from their own stupidity" ideas, and that the proper solution is just to better educate people about why voting is secret in the first place. But that does not seem a practical solution, and this is the sort of thing that starts with one idiot taking a ballot selfie and then leads a few years later to 30 million idiots proudly wearing t-shirts displaying proof that they voted "correctly" and are on the "correct" side. Pick any side. SIEG HEIL, MEIN FUHR--oops!

    --
    ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
    ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
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  • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday August 25 2015, @11:16AM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday August 25 2015, @11:16AM (#227521)

    So why does my vote need to be kept secret?

    Need? I don't think it should be required to keep your vote secret, but I also think you should have the right to do so if you wish.

    I'm normally firmly on the "there is NO good reason for censorship" side of things, no matter the circumstances.

    Then you go on to show you think otherwise.

    But this one has me leaning strongly toward just a smidgen of censorship.

    Then you're unprincipled. The government has no constitutional authority to ban such pictures.