The really secret ballot

[nancylebov]

Is there anyone who isn't saying who they're voting for?

Comments

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

This is the first year I have told people who I am voting for. My dad a"h raised me to treat the ballot as secret. For the first time I have a reason for picking the candidate I'm choosing which I am not hearing all over the place, so I'm sharing that reason.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Which candidate and what reason?

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

I'm going for Obama for one basic reason. The worst thing the Bush administration has done, IMHO, has been an expansion of executive power. This manifests itself in signing statements, expansions of the notion of executive privilege, the "Unitary Executive", obviously bald face lying to Congress under oath, and other ways.

I don't trust Clinton to roll this expansion back. Rather, I think she'd take and use this expansion for her own causes. Even though those causes are in many cases my own, I don't think we can afford to continue the trend of 'anything goes' politics. Her attempts to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida are a personal example of the same sort of refusal to play by the rules that Bush 2 has repeatedly shown.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I agree with your analysis, both of what's important and which candidate to back for that reason. If I'm asked for a short form, it's usually, "My husband studied constitutional law under Obama and said he was damned good. Right now, I really think we need a good con law scholar in the White House." It isn't the whole explanation, of course, but it gets the point across well enough for bus-stop type conversations.

[lordlnyc.livejournal.com]

All I will say about the person I voted for today is my candidate will make history!

[doomspark.livejournal.com]

Although I'm a registered Democrat, I dislike all of the candidates so much that I've found myself voting for a Republican candidate for the first time in my life.

Yup.

[lordandrei.livejournal.com]

I never tell

[mneme]

Obama.

The point of the secret ballot isn't to be secret -- it's to not avoid voting (or vote for the candidate you don't prefer) because of fear of reprisals, and to not be able to prove who you voted for (thus not be able to accept payment for a vote).

Of course, with absentee ballots, that's kinda out the window.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

The point of a secret ballot is that one may not be compelled to reveal one's vote, not that one may not share one's vote.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I realize that. It's just that, with all the trouble that's taken to keep ballots secret and the risk it adds of election fraud, I find it mildly amusing that so many people are talking about who they're going to vote for.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

This year I'm talking because I care enough to want to influence other people to whatever extent I can, but there have certainly been years when I did not tell anyone how I voted.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Yes, me. Partly because I haven't decided yet, but mostly because I'm tired of getting savaged for my choices by one group of friends or the other. :-(

[gildedacorn.livejournal.com]

Me, and for the same reason.

[werewulf.livejournal.com]

And me as well for again the same reason!

[zenlizard]

I didn't tell people whom I voted for. Yes, I voted already, my state demands that the election judges vote by absentee ballot.

[captain-button.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be snarky and say that I can't tell you who I voted for, because it was on a Diebold machine.

And besides the much discussed security problems, Diebold does seem to have done their best to make it look like they are keeping track of who votes for who.