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The Not-So-Secret Ballot
Nov. 9th, 2022 05:33 pmSo let's talk about an election thing that has absolutely nothing to do with yesterday's results.
Our polling place has been moved, so Gretchen and I hopped in the car and headed there yesterday morning to vote. I chose paper, while Gretchen picked plastic -- sorry, the touchscreen voting machine. After I filled out my two pages of ballot, including all of the judicial retention ballot, noting how the Sharpie I was given bled through the paper, but not in a place where it could be mistaken for an attempt to vote for anything on the other side, I brought my ballots over to feed into the scanner, which would then drop them into the box as a permanent record available for audit. This was all good.
What was *not* good was the older gentleman who was sitting there who informed me that I had to give him my ballots so that he could initial them before they went into the scanner. Assuming that he was not as blind as a bat, this meant that he could easily look down and see who and what I had voted for in any of the places where I had filled out the ballot.
This bothers me. Not that I think that he actually cared, but this meant that my ballot was not secret -- in fact, it meant that *every* ballot going into the machine was not secret.
This was equally true for the touchscreen balloting, as it printed out a slightly different form of ballot to be fed to the scanner, which also had to be initialed and which was -- by design and for good reason -- human readable.
As a system being used in an election where our ballots are supposed to be secret, I think this is an absolutely idiotic implementation.
At least I didn't hear my ballot being shredded for voting the wrong way as I fed it into the scanner. :)
Our polling place has been moved, so Gretchen and I hopped in the car and headed there yesterday morning to vote. I chose paper, while Gretchen picked plastic -- sorry, the touchscreen voting machine. After I filled out my two pages of ballot, including all of the judicial retention ballot, noting how the Sharpie I was given bled through the paper, but not in a place where it could be mistaken for an attempt to vote for anything on the other side, I brought my ballots over to feed into the scanner, which would then drop them into the box as a permanent record available for audit. This was all good.
What was *not* good was the older gentleman who was sitting there who informed me that I had to give him my ballots so that he could initial them before they went into the scanner. Assuming that he was not as blind as a bat, this meant that he could easily look down and see who and what I had voted for in any of the places where I had filled out the ballot.
This bothers me. Not that I think that he actually cared, but this meant that my ballot was not secret -- in fact, it meant that *every* ballot going into the machine was not secret.
This was equally true for the touchscreen balloting, as it printed out a slightly different form of ballot to be fed to the scanner, which also had to be initialed and which was -- by design and for good reason -- human readable.
As a system being used in an election where our ballots are supposed to be secret, I think this is an absolutely idiotic implementation.
At least I didn't hear my ballot being shredded for voting the wrong way as I fed it into the scanner. :)