The Australian Ballot was introduced in 1856 in Australia and spread to Europe and the US. It afforded the voter the right to vote in secret.
I would argue (and I am not the only one or the first), that the Secret Ballot Standard no longer exists and the average voters does not realize it. They think mail in voting or voting in person with the ballot in your own private booth affords Secrecy. What a pile of rubbish.
How does the current voting system not provide Secrecy?
This video provides as good a case study as any for a particular state.
Ask yourself, how much data is being gathered about YOU in this entire process? How much do you TRUST that all the people who have access to this data are acting in a TRUSTWORTHY manner? How many secrets about YOU are being stored in their database?
Let’s review some of the ways your SECRECY has been eroded.
Registration Database
Your name and personal information is in a publicly available database along with your party affiliation and voting history (when you voted). Using statistics it is not too difficult to use that database in a predictive manner to approximate HOW people will vote. They know how YOU are going to vote before you vote.
E-Poll Books
For those people who show up to the polls, they know when you ARRIVE and since they know HOW you are going to vote, they know how many more voters are needed to CANCEL your vote.
Mail In Ballots
I would argue mail in ballots are really a SURVEILLANCE system.
Predicting Volume
Mail in ballots are printed on special paper. That paper needs to be ordered from the paper mill. The paper mill needs to know when to start producing it and how much is needed. The volume predication is tied to overall predicted voter participation rates and likely tied back to voting history in the registration data base. They know how many people are likely to vote.
Assigning Ballots Styles To Voters
The county develops different ballot styles based on where the voter lives and each voter is assigned a style. They know exactly what issues you are going to be voting on, what ballot style you have been assigned and the location on that ballot of every vote you might cast. Combined with the party affiliation and the voting history, they can predict with a high degree of accuracy how that specific ballot will be voted as soon as the STYLE of the ballot is finalized.
Barcodes on the Ballots
The county decides how many ballot styles are needed and a barcode identifying that ballot style is imprinted on the ballot. So YOUR ballot has a piece of UNREADABLE information about you. How do you KNOW that it is “only” the ballot style? Can YOU read a bar code? These ballots are intended to be counted by a machine, not a human. I would argue that having ANY imprinted information on a ballot that is not readable by a human is an affront to PRIVACY and hence the end of the secret ballot. Case Closed.
Assigning Voters to Mail Packets
They know who has been assigned a mail packet and who has not. The barcode is used to indicate in a database that YOU have been assigned a mail packet. Contract this to showing up on the day that voting occurs and showing an ID and being given a paper ballot on the spot. They know exactly which ballot style, which ballot and which envelope is going to each address.
Envelope Printing
Did you know after the ballot is stuffed into an envelope and your address is imprinted on it, other “auditing information” is printed on the outside of the envelope? Yea really. An YOU have no idea what the auditing information is used for that is printed on YOUR ballot envelope. Non human readable information does not belong on a ballot or its envelope. Did we give anyone permission to do that?
Linking Envelope to Ballot
Images are taken of the envelope and its code and matched with the visible code on the ballot itself. Now there is a direct connection between the you, the exact ballot given to you (that piece of paper), the placement of the votes to be cast on that ballot, your geographical location, the exact envelope issued to you and post office where that ballot is going to.
Automated Sorting
Your envelope then has a picture taken of it and is sorted by zip code. They know exactly which bin on which rack every envelope is sorted too. They know when that bin in the rack is moved to a pallet for shipping, when it shrink wrapped and put on the back of a semi truck to be delivered to the USPS for example. The pallet is WEIGHED and tracked for delivery.
Labelling of the Trays
Now that the mail has been sorted into trays it is also tagged with a green label which is an indication to the USPS that these are ballots. The USPS then knows when ballots are going into their system and can make use of barcoding and imaging for further tracking with a service like this. That individual piece of mail about you is tracked at every step from delivery through return.
Voting and Tabulation
Much has been said about this topic so I am not going to repeat it here. Suffice it to say, when you drop your ballot in the mail, they know when you did that based on the USPS tracking system and based on your voter profile, they know very likely how you voted down to the position on each ballot of what you filled in. If you show up to vote at the polls, they know when you check in and with a high degree of probability how you are going to vote.
Return to Secrecy
Let’s contrast the above process to a new process. A SECRET process.
You show up to your precinct unannounced. No more predictive analytics.
You show an ID and your name is crossed off a paper list by the poll worker. No e-poll books.
You are given a ballot that is RANDOMLY assigned. No putting a barcode on the ballot assigned by THEM to YOU..
That ballot has nothing but HUMAN readable information on it. No bar codes, no secret auditing information.
The ballot is intended to be counted by a HUMAN, not a machine. The ballot is printed in such a way to make it EASY for a human to count. What a concept.
You vote it with ball point pen and drop it in a locked box. No envelopes with tracking information on it sent through a system which reports in real time where the ballot is.
The vote is hand counted by HUMANS, no computers.
The vote tally is verified by HUMANS and posted in the precinct.
The vote tally is transmitted by HUMANS up through the system and aggregated.
If we want a return to a truly secret ballot, we need to remove as much technology as possible.
We need to stop processing our ballots like bulk JUNK MAIL.
We need to stop dropping off the ballots in drop boxes that are made by the same companies that make TRASH CANS.
No matter what your political persuasion, can we agree on that?
Cheers.
Excellent!!!! Thank You
Yes. We can agree on that.