I know most will initially oppose this, but hear me out. The “secret” ballot is why we have stolen elections. They can simply cheat because they know no one can see it. It makes it very hard to prove that an election was stolen when the evidence (ballots) is “secret”. Imagine a murder trial where all the evidence is “secret”. That would be absurd, because there would be no way to know if the guy is guilty or not. Well that’s what we have now with our elections. Without seeing the ballots, there’s no way to know for sure if the election was real or not. We just have to take their word for it and trust that the government and media wouldn’t lie to us. And we all know they lie to us, constantly. We can’t use the honor system for elections, that’s ridiculous, especially when they have no honor. So the only way to keep everyone honest is full transparency. The left loves to say “prove it” or “where’s the evidence” when we say the election was obviously stolen, but why don’t they prove to us that the election was legitimate? They can’t prove it was legitimate either. Neither side can prove or disprove anything when all the evidence is “secret”. But it shouldn’t be like that. The government should have to prove that the election was real by making the ballots public, so any citizen can personally audit the election if they so choose.
But what about privacy? Privacy was the fake reason why they implemented the secret ballot. They always have a fake, propaganda reason when they want to do something nefarious, to get the people on board. (like the “weapons of mass destruction” that never existed etc.) The real reason they did it was so they could cheat in elections. I know everyone wants privacy, so do I, but at what cost? In this case, “secret” ballots = fake elections. With “secret” ballots, we are trading real elections for the perceived safety of privacy. Like Ben Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty (real elections), to purchase a little temporary Safety (ballot privacy), deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
So we have to choose between fake elections, and people knowing how you voted. Fake elections are the worse of the two evils, because they make us all slaves to the ruling class without even knowing it. The ruling class does whatever they want, usually to the detriment of the country and citizens, and we are powerless to stop them because our elections are secretly rigged. We’re slaves with invisible handcuffs and we don’t even know it.
Having people know how you voted is the lesser of two evils because at least we would have real elections and actually be in control of our own country. We should have the courage to stand by our beliefs anyway. If we can’t own our beliefs publicly, then we are cowards who don’t deserve to win. It’s harsh, but sometimes people need to hear harsh truths. It’s time to be brave and save our country before it’s too late. Yes you might lose a few friends, but if they stop talking to you just because you voted for the other guy, then they were never real friends anyway. And that will give you the opportunity to make new friends who share similar values. When one door closes, another door opens.
And by the way, it wasn’t always “secret”. America had public voting for the first half of its history. Voting was done in public events, in plain view of everyone. It’s how the founding fathers did it. And it worked. They had real elections at that time. They only started talking about “privacy” (remember that’s the propaganda reason to get people on board) when they wanted to start having fake elections. Public elections worked before and they can work again, all we need is the courage to do it.
Your proposed solution does address the problem you identified, but privacy is not just a “propaganda reason.” There are legitimate consequences to having your votes publicly known. There will be political persecution carried out by radicals on both sides. This introduces perverse incentives for others to intimidate people into how they should vote, else there be repudiation against them.
There will be no “secret Trump voter” with this enacted, because people will vote a certain way for a fear of the consequences of others knowing their true political persuasion.
There are better ways to achieve this goal. Fingerprints! Require fingerprints on every ballot, put a fingerprint scanner on the machine that you put the ballot in that will read the fingerprints if it detects multiple fingerprints on a ballot then open an investigation and only then would the police be allowed to use the fingerprints to scan for a name if that person’s fingerprints are on file or ever come on file and they’re found to have their fingerprints on more than one ballot then charge them for voter fraud and put stiff penalties on it
I knew most wouldn’t understand. Maybe I’ll try one more time. If ballots are secret, then there’s no way for you to verify if the election was real or not. You’re just taking their word for it. It’s the honor system. They can cheat and tell you the other guy won, and you just have to take their word for it. Is that really what you guys want? You want honor system elections, knowing full well that most people have no honor? You want it to be impossible for you to personally verify if the election was legitimate or not? You just want to trust, but not verify?
Saying the same thing but with fewer words does nothing to change anyone’s minds. Nor does opening with “I knew most wouldn’t understand” - it just creates and aura of elitism (‘these poor plebs don’t understand my intelligent ideas’)
You’re going to have to address the actual counter-arguments that people have put forward with viable responses.
No one made any counterarguments to what I said about verifying the election - because it’s true and there is no counterargument. Either you can personally verify it, or you can’t. And most people are choosing to NOT verify it, because they are terrified of being persecuted. I understand the fear of persecution, I have it too, but being scared is not a counterargument. The thing most people aren’t understanding is that the alternative to public ballots is fake elections, which you should fear even more. Fake elections are the reason the government refuses to secure the border, causing us to be invaded and replaced, and causing our drug epidemic and human trafficking epidemic. They are the reason our rights are slowly being eroded away with things that neither side wants like the Patriot Act. They are the reason that the government steals billions of dollars from us and gives it away to other countries while refusing to help our own people who got hit by hurricane Helene. They are the reason that our government has become fully corrupt and serve themselves at our expense, rather than serving us.
The reason I posted that Ben Franklin quote, is that the people who want unverifiable and therefore fraudulent elections because it makes them feel safer in the short term, are the exact people he was talking about. They are the ones trying to give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
An election can be verified if you use paper ballots. In Virginia, that is required. We also have a process that is already law called “Risk Limiting Audits”. This provides a means to hand count ballots from a selected group of polling places and comparing the hand count to the printed results from the ballot scanner. It the errors are less than 1%, then via extrapolation, one can assume that the results are legitimate.
We are living in a post-constitutional era, where anarcho-tyranny reigns, and there are thousands of political prisoners who had the audacity to let their opposition to the regime be known. So your dismissal of security concerns is troubling.
Since the 1960s, radical leftists, including the Marxist Black Panthers, patrolled outside polling places armed with firearms and other weapons. You would give them the names of everyone who voted for the non-Marxist candidates!
The only problems public ballots would solve is the difficulty radicals have in identifying their opposition. Even in New Hampshire public balloting, the contents of the ballot itself remains private.
As to historical voting traditions, America is no longer what it was. The character of the country has been severely degraded, such that processes that worked with God-fearing, moral people are impractical now.
A better solution would be a federal requirement for clean voter rolls with actively enforced criminal penalties for violations, paper ballots cast on election day (one issue per ballot), voter ID, indelible ink on the finger of those who vote, and all precinct ballot tallies reported early enough that the secretaries of state can report the results by 23:59:59 on election day. Failure to report before the deadline nullifies the results in that state.
Verified by who though? Can you personally verify it, or do you have to take the word of a stranger?
The reason we have political prisoners is because they stole the 2020 election. I think the security concern is letting a small group of people count all the votes in secrecy. That system is very prone to cheating, which causes stolen elections and political prisoners. This is why Joseph Stalin (terrible guy but I agree with this particular quote) said “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
I understand that people would try to intimidate voters, but that doesn’t mean we should have unverifiable elections. We shouldn’t give in to terrorism, we should legally defend ourselves against it. That’s what the second amendment is for.
I agree that people don’t have much character anymore, which is exactly why we can’t trust a small group of people to count all the votes. I believe the only way to keep everyone honest these days is full transparency.
I like all your suggestions in your last paragrah, they are certainly much better than what we have now. But at the end of they day, we still wouldn’t get to personally count the votes to verify accuracy. We would still have to take someone else’s word for it.
Every jurisdiction I’ve lived in (even blue shiteholes) permit on-site ballot watchers from at least both parties. So I disagree with your characterization that nobody can personally verify ballots.
But in at least one Dem-controlled jurisdiction, even that legal requirement wasn’t honored in 2020. The Dem ballot-counters forced Republicans out with help from the state police (IIRC) and then they covered the windows.
There are ways to stop this sort of lawless tyranny (e.g. nullify election results from jurisdictions that permit this), but making ballot choices personally identifiable and public isn’t it. They’d simply violate the law with jackboot assistance, as they did in 2020.
You can personally verify them by signing up to be an election officer in your municipality. You would then be part of the audit or recount team. Our state requires one election officer from each party to do this type of work. Both officers would have to agree on the vote(s) cast before the ballot would be approved.
The issue I see would be that timid Voters could/would be disenfranchised to vote. Could you imagine being the lone person to vote for a specfic candidate when your entire town voted for the other candidate? I think the real issue is that we have become dependent on Voting machines and allowing the counting process to be hijacked. There is definitely room to improve the validation of Vote COUNTS as well as ensuring that those choosing to vote are LEGALLY allowed to vote and only vote once. That would require Voter ID Laws, proof of Citizenship, paper ballots, etc.
How about every national election day either it be midterms elections or a presidential election will be made a national holiday and recognized by all employers. Every recognized legal American citizen is required by law to participate in these elections with one vote cast. Every ballot will be watermarked and serial numbered for precise chain of custody and tracking from the printer to voting booth with a tear away tab that you have to keep with your personal records for at least 5 years.
Voting days will have same day ballot counting and recording. Implement a nationwide ban on all electronic voting machines and drop boxes. Website where you can look at you recorded election ballots at anytime.
