Did you know that secret ballots are relatively new in the US?
I certainly didn’t know it.
But they are; they only date to the last decades of the 1800s:
All elections for most of America’s history were organized to be non-secret. They were public events with individual voting occurring in plain sight of the crowds that election days once attracted. They were the culmination of weeks of excited electioneering. In large cities, they were public spectacles, with torchlight parades and the large scale public “illuminations,” so popular in the Victorian era. In rural places, election days often coincided with markets and sale days. In both contexts, crowds of voters and non-voters, the eligible and the ineligible, young and old, men and (some) women gathered at pubic polling places and watched as the [male] voters, one by one, stepped out from the crowd to vote.
Please read the whole thing; it’s really interesting.
Also, commenter Dave makes a good point (edited very slightly for punctuation, etc.):
Theoretically, anonymous voting prevents bribery by denying ways for bribee to provide proof to briber that he has voted in the way requested. Mail in ballots pretty much completely destroyed that mechanism of bribery prevention. Bribee can fill out the ballot in front of the briber now. With mail in ballots confidential voting has absolutely no benefit besides making voter fraud very easy to do.
Progress!
The computer science term for “secret ballot” is “receipt-freeness”. The point is that I can have no receipt of how I voted, so that I cannot prove to someone how I voted, EVEN IF I WANT TO.
This was violated in Poland under communism, where one had the “option” of voting secretly behind a curtain, or of publicly casting one’s votes for the official Communist Party. And of course, People were watching. This would similarly have been violated by the Democrats’ idea of “card check” for union certification elections, where one would have the “choice” of voting secretly, or of voting for unionization when asked to do so by a union goon.
Democratic contempt for election integrity goes back a long way.
Of course, the real bribery in the US is the governments’ budgets. We redistribute (means tested plus entitlement) over $2 trillion annually, which amounts to more than $30,000 per man, woman or child in the poorest 20% of the population.
It allows thugs to make sure people vote and vote exactly as instructed. In Chicago, the Democrat politicians have an alliance with the drug gangs who serve as their GOTV enforcers in a lot of neighborhoods. See the Chicago Magazine article on said alliance from 6-10 years ago.
Perhaps part of the acceptance of “public” voting at that time was an increased appreciation that they were under a republican form of government, not a pure democracy. Thus their role in electing congressional (and other local) representation was properly seen as part of their democratic contribution to the original constitutional scheme (and most of the time the passions involved were not too disruptive of social civility – abolition, railroads, labor strife, and cross of gold as exceptions). But they also knew that their state legislature would be selecting the senate members, who could and would provide a brake on excessively emotional public reactions, as the more deliberative body further removed from the passions of fraction, etc.
And it appears this transition to private voting coincided with the growth of Progressivism, Wilsonian “living constitutionalism”, etc. Robert Reilly, in America On Trial, suggests Progressive ideas were transferred from German universities in the mid to late 1800’s. At that time college educated US citizens often had to go to Germany to get an advanced degree, and thus brought those ideas back to the US. Mark Ledbetter, in America’s Forgotten History, suggests the Christian Social movement of the 1880’s played an embryonic role as well.
Good article. Also the article “How the Other Half (plus) Voted: The Party Ticket States” that is linked in this article. Thanks for posting, Neo.
I did know the general thrust of these articles. I serve in town government in Vermont where we may be the only place in the world that still uses the phrase “Australian ballot” to mean a secret, pre-printed ballot as originally developed in Australia in the 1850s. That phrase was once widely used, but it has fallen out of favor in most places. It remains in Vermont state law at 17 V.S.A. § 2103(a):
“Australian ballot system” means the technique of having the polls open for voting on specified and warned matters during a warned, extended period, which may be during or after a municipal meeting, or both. An “Australian ballot” means a uniformly printed ballot, typically confined to the secret vote election of specified offices as previously warned to be voted upon by the Australian ballot system. The term “Australian ballot” includes any ballots counted by a vote tabulator approved for use in any election conducted in the State.
Following up on my previous comment, the Burlington Free Press (the largest newspaper in Vermont), had an excellent article in 2014 about the history of voting and the “Australian ballot.” It echoes and adds to the themes in the article that Neo linked to. The headline of the article is “In Vermont, Ballots Are Australian.” Recommended:
https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/2014/03/02/in-vermont-ballots-are-australian/5907591/
My bad. The correct citation to Vermont state law is 17 V.S.A. § 2103(4) not 17 V.S.A. § 2103(a).
Never understood how Caucus voting squared with the secret ballot voting.
I only slightly recall hearing about the “Australian” ballot, but never knew what it was, nor how early Americans voted. So it’s both interesting in itself, but also interesting as something not really discussed in US history courses.
I used to read the whole history books, not just the limited “assignments”. Never read about these voting systems.
I like the secrecy – better for individuals to oppose the mob.
We need single paper ballots, counted in public, in the precinct.
Use more gov’t workers, and more paid-volunteer (one day laborers).
All counting should be videotaped with at least two video cameras by the state.
We need to spend more to make the elections better against fraud.
In person, one-day voting is less convenient, but more fraud-proof. This last election should never have included so many fraud-prone mail-in ballots.
There should have been far more Republican observers AND paid-volunteer counters. Especially in the Fraud cities of the Swing states – which were mostly correctly predicted (among 10 key) before the election.
Republicans against fraud should be protesting more, already. But certainly each Sat. & Sun. in the Fraud cities (Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia & Pittsburgh, Atlanta; maybe Las Vegas & Reno, and Phoenix).
“No Certification Without Observation” – should be one of the arguments.
Fact: many Republican observers were not allowed to observe.
No observation should be mean no certification.
If observers are restricted, the burden of proof of “honesty” should shift to the state — if they can’t prove all the ballots were honest, they shouldn’t certify.
Violation of the law about observers means … the election shouldn’t be certified.
In this case.
But it’s a questionable precedent, and could easily be used by a losing gov’t to avoid a huge election defeat.
What is needed, but I haven’t heard that it exists, is for some gov’t officials to confess to cheating. It’s not clear that election cheaters who don’t confess will ever be caught.
Paper ballots – counted by precinct on Election Day.
That’s the BEST balance we know of, with few absentee ballots mailed out only upon request, and received only with all signatures and dates in order.
I can imagine also accepting Faxed Public ballots as an option for secret absentee or secret In-Person ballots. Tho allowing some non-secret, Public ballots puts pressure on those voting secretly, so it’s not pure “more free choice at no cost”.