Voting should be completely private, including the fact of whether a person voted or not. It's that person's choice, and not voting is just a valid of a choice, and deserves to be kept private.
This is how the ballot boxes get stuffed. The fraudsters figure out who doesn't vote, who's dead but still on the roles, etc, and stuff the boxes with votes for those people.
Ballots typically do not have "none of the above" options on them. This has a few consequences.
You can put in "noone" in the write-in, but someone could legally make that their name. Not a valid way to mark none of the above.
You could leave the entry unmarked. However, that is also ambiguous. Did you really mean to leave it unmarked, or did you make a mistake? It also leaves the possibility that someone could put a mark on there for you after the fact.
Because of the lack of voter id, and problems such as ambiguous ballots, how would you show there was fraud or not unless you caught someone red handed? Of course, if you don't need to show an id, how would a monitor prove that the wrong person is voting. Some states do require an id, by my state does not and there are always strange unexplained results.
Oh, that's right. I forgot the US has widespread electronic voting. I was thinking of normal paper ballots where you can just spoil the ballot by scribbling all over it instead of ticking a box. I guess that makes it more difficult to submit a spoiled vote.
That said, you can still vote for one of the lunatic fringe minority parties. Under the American two party system none of them will ever amount to anything.
I was calling infrequent voters yesterday, people who need a reminder. A couple didn't know it was Election Day, which may sound weird to some folks here but is not uncommon in off years. Others knew, but had no idea where they were supposed to go to vote. And still others didn't know about voter ID requirements that are new in some states.
For those of us who volunteer to help infrequent voters have the info they need to vote, this data is crucial.
You're calling it private, but the whole debate is whether it should be private or public (currently it's public). You can't have a democracy if people don't know how to engage in it.
I genuinely don't understand people who would get a phone call from somebody donating their free time to make sure people know how to participate in their democracy and respond by being angry. If not for people like me volunteering to get out the vote by making calls and knocking on doors, our democracy would fall apart.
And getting people who are so uninformed and clueless that they don't know there's an election happening to vote is keeping our democracy together?
I genuinely don't understand people who think that getting lots of completely ignorant people to cast votes is better than having an election with a smaller turnout of informed, competent citizens.
Your view is one with an ugly history in this country. These are folks who have vested interests in the outcomes and absolutely have opinions about the issues.
> I genuinely don't understand people who would get a phone call from somebody donating their free time to make sure people know how to participate in their democracy and respond by being angry.
I would be angry because you used what should be private information to contact me. I would also be angry that you framed this spamming as helping democracy.
I don't know what you tell people but if it turned out the person who spammed me was actually affiliated with one party or another, then I would associate that party with sleazy tactics and be further angered.
> If not for people like me volunteering to get out the vote by making calls and knocking on doors, our democracy would fall apart.
oh come on, "choosing" to not vote is most often choosing to be lazy. If you want to express resistance to the dominant parties you vote independent or invalid but if you care about democracy you still go vote.
I'm not american but I live in a country where I believe does not employ true democracy. I actually question the ability of the majority to decide on anything, but in either case, how do you get out of that?
Here voting is mandatory which means even people that don't even know who the candidates are, have the same political power as I do.
Voting feels like a sad joke that the rich and powerful gave us so we can pretend we are "in control". In reality money votes, not people.
On the latter, if you don't believe we are a democracy, then I want to see your plan for turning us into one. If you're going to make that claim, you better be willing to put in the work given what others have sacrificed for our right to vote.
I do not need to have that opinion to understand that it exists. Personally I do vote and at least somewhat believe there is a democracy here in the states (especially compared to many other places currently in the world), but I urge you to try and understand why some may not be so convinced.
Probably a big part of it is lack of a good education. That combined with a few facts such as our usage of electronic voting machines having clear security exploits. These exploits are often found right after each election and the fact that the whole process isn't publicly audited is alone enough to raise suspicion. Even if they magically have never been exploited I'm sure many people believe the usage of gerrymandering, corporate campaign donations, lack of voting rights for the previously incarcerated, and the electoral college lead to a situation in which the realpolitik of America is different than what we're led to believe.
Again I personally do believe we have a somewhat real and fair democracy. However there is much that can be done to improve the legitimacy and the projected legitimacy. Yelling at people who choose not to vote is not a solution. My personal suggestions would be to switch to a direct voting system in which each person has an equal vote. Consider switching to approval voting to allow for a more accurate representation of the peoples wants and allow for 3rd (or 4th or 5th...) party candidates to have a more serious chance. Paper Ballots with a more auditable process.
You may not agree with my personal suggestions. That's not the point though. The point is that people choosing to not vote is not a problem that can be solved by being angry at said people. Instead we should find out their complaints and see if there is a way to make the validity of our democracy more obvious.
I'm not arguing that we are or aren't a democracy, or saying that view is valid or invalid. I'm simply saying that if someone thinks that we're not a democracy, then they have a moral obligation to try to do something about it.
> My personal suggestions...
Personal suggestions are pointless without action. If that action isn't voting for someone, then all I'm saying is tell me what actions you're going to take instead?
I find it obnoxious that while some of us are doing the HARD WORK for free that others complain from the sidelines. Not speaking to you specifically, but if someone thinks voting is pointless then do SOMETHING that isn't. Don't leave it to other people to do the work.
I see. However I disagree that they have a moral obligation to do something about it. You're setting up a bit of a false scenario. You said "if you don't believe we are a democracy, then I want to see your plan for turning us into one." That assumes those people all want some sort of change into a democracy and that it would be morally irresponsible for them to want something other than democracy, such as for example the status quo. Also not everyone thinks democracy is the proper end goal.
You're also assuming that because someone does not vote they are also not doing anything they believe will better their situation in regards to the government they live under. They very well may be doing _exactly_ what they think will help improve their governmental situation.
Fraudsters will do what you describe either way. At least with the current system, the victims or people who know them have a chance of noticing that they were recorded as casting a vote when they actually didn’t. If we don’t make that info public, how would such schemes ever be discovered?
This is how the ballot boxes get stuffed. The fraudsters figure out who doesn't vote, who's dead but still on the roles, etc, and stuff the boxes with votes for those people.
Here's an infamous example: https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/17/archives/followers-say-ji...