Your votes are not private

[Sarah]

I don't know if how we vote is public knowledge or could be, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.  The things that people "think" are private are usually surprised when it comes up that it's not.  

I don't think anything is private any more.  You have to work very hard to keep everything about you private.

Back when I registered to vote years and years ago I was asked my party affiliation and I did fill that in, but that wouldn't tell how I vote now as I don't consider myself that much any more, but it does bring me the honour of getting all their advertisements.  

[greatguns]

Thank you Wilma.  I guess I do know some things!

[Wilma]

To learn how voter registration works in Kansas, go to this link    http://www.kssos.org/elections/elections_registration.html

How you vote is not a matter of record nor does anyone know how you voted.  How you register to vote is a matter of public record and can be obtained from the county election clerk by paying for that information.  (By Janet, Wilma's daughter)

[Anmar]

Wilma pretty much hit the nail on the head.  You can buy the voter registration rolls from the office of the registrar.  It will show party affiliation but it doesn't show how you vote.  I worked in a few campaigns back in 1999-2000 and we were given lists of names, addresses, phone numbers, and party affiliation of voters in the district that we were working at the time.


Steve, believe it or not, there are people out there who don't vote strictly along party lines.  If thats what you do as a Libertarian, it must be a tough trip to the polls every year for you.

[srkruzich]

Wilma pretty much hit the nail on the head.  You can buy the voter registration rolls from the office of the registrar.  It will show party affiliation but it doesn't show how you vote.  I worked in a few campaigns back in 1999-2000 and we were given lists of names, addresses, phone numbers, and party affiliation of voters in the district that we were working at the time.


Steve, believe it or not, there are people out there who don't vote strictly along party lines.  If thats what you do as a Libertarian, it must be a tough trip to the polls every year for you.

No i vote for whomever i want to vote for but i see absolutely no need for forcing someone to choose a party to register.  Thats non of their business.  I remember registering and i told them i don't have a party.  I could have been snotty and told em none of their business but i was nice.

I don't know where someone has the right to buy a list of voters and how their registered. thats none of their business. Nothing about a voter is anyones business. 

[srkruzich]

To learn how voter registration works in Kansas, go to this link    http://www.kssos.org/elections/elections_registration.html

How you vote is not a matter of record nor does anyone know how you voted.  How you register to vote is a matter of public record and can be obtained from the county election clerk by paying for that information.  (By Janet, Wilma's daughter)

Well its a good thing that i told them i'm not a member of any party then.  Though it does give me cause and some decision making in that i may choose to withdraw my name from voting roles.

[Wilma]

That is your right and your privilege, but by doing so you are giving up your right to have a say in any elections.  The law is the law.  In every kind of dealing you have to give some to get some.  To be able to help make decisions, you have to give up some of your privacy.

[flintauqua]

I present, you decide:

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Mandatory Voting? Automatic Registration? How Un-American!


By Mark Green
Published October 19th 2009 in Huffington Post

If you have an election where the winner gets four percent of the eligible electorate, is that a functioning democracy? Having just lost such a runoff contest in New York City,I congratulated the winner for running a skillful campaign according to the rules. But are there better rules?
When there were similarly pathetic turnouts in local school board races 20 years ago, such elections were ridiculed and then abolished. When there are 70-80 percent turnouts in British, French, Swedish and Israeli elections -- or 60 percent in our own 2008 presidential election -- no one questions whether they broadly represent popular will in a functioning democracy. A seven percent turnout, however, risks choosing city-wide officials more in a private selection than a public election.

Instead, let's expand Instant Runoff Voting and automatic registration, and even consider mandatory voting laws:

Instant Runoff Voting. Under IRV, voters rank their choices for an office, 1 or 2 or 3 depending on how many are running. Then after the first and only round of voting, any candidate with a majority of course wins the election, whether primary or general. But if no one has a majority, second and third and choices are automatically allocated until someone gets 50 percent + 1 of all the votes. With the tabulation occurring electronically, a majority winner is guaranteed on election night.

Besides assuring majority rule, IRV saves taxpayers money and cuts the costs of campaigns since there's only one primary and no runoff; reduces negative campaigning because candidates will want to be an acceptable second choice for their opponents' supporters; increases turnout since the electorate needs only to show up to the polls once; avoids winners only working their narrow geographic, racial, religious or organizational niches; and frees people to vote their consciences without the worry of wasting their vote on an admirable though arguable long-shot (a Ralph Nader, a Libertarian) since their ballots will be re-cast for their next choice.

San Francisco has been using IRV since 2004, and recently Aspen, Burlington -- and Australia, Ireland, Great Britain and New Zealand -- have adopted it. It's now been used in 46 American elections in six counties, cities or towns. Analyzing the first IRV election in San Francisco, FairVote, the Center for Voting and Democracy, concluded (PDF) that "winners received significantly more votes than winners in [past] December runoffs (and especially more than winners in conventional plurality elections), more votes were cast in the decisive election and winners received more votes both in real terms and as a percent of the vote than the old 'delayed' runoff system. And that means more voters had a say in who their supervisor [mayor] is."

Automatic Registration. According to recent U.S. Census data, 30 percent of eligible Americans are not registered vote. So instead of hoping that high school graduates will find their way one by one to Boards of Elections to register as all American jurisdictions do, many countries use their census or tax data bases to create a voter registration list or engage in direct mail or even door-to-door registration drives (Germany, France, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Belgium). According to the Brennan Center for Legal Justice's report, Voter Registration Modernization, "Although the United States does not have a residence registry or a national health care system [yet] that provides a list of all eligible voters, states have a variety of databases that compile information about their citizens - databases maintained by motor vehicle departments, income tax authorities, and social service agencies. Many of these lists already include all the information necessary to determine voter eligibility..." With everyone registered and then encouraged to vote by mailings and public service ads, turnouts increase.

Mandatory Voting. When I used to routinely ask applying law students in interviews what they thought of this idea simply to test their ability to think on their feet, about 98 percent would object to it as coercive, big-brotherish, un-American! "But if we accept the days it takes to sit on juries as a condition of citizenship, why not the few minutes it takes to vote?" Um, oh. Indeed, Australia (since 1924) regards it as much a part of their civic obligation as we in America (for the most part) do paying taxes.

Other countries which require voting includes Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Ecuador and Switzerland. While rules vary, in nearly all there's a penalty of some $15, which citizens can avoid paying by providing a legitimate excuse for not voting (religious objections, travel, illness). And voters can still write-in a name or vote for none-of-the-above.

So why bother? Because such a system could help create a habit to use the franchise rather than just cite it on July 4 ... help assure that elected officials more truly reflect their constituents ... and encourage candidates to concentrate on convincing 50 percent of the total vote, not just pulling out four percent of the eligible electorate. Or as a store window sign down my block once actually put it, "Democracy is like sex -- it works best when you participate."

----------------------------------------

From the Center

Flint

[Sarah]

Steve....

I finally got the link open.  I haven't actually gotten to read it until now, but I don't think the group had exactly "who" a person voted for, but rather were able to obtain a history of everyone that voted and what elections they voted in and was making it available to everyone which is illegal.  No one is able to obtain a history of how often a person votes or when they voted, so still a big deal and no body's business but my own.  But just to let you know, I don't think they were able to get a list of "who" they voted for.  :-) 

[flintauqua]

Another view, from the Washington Post

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Can you shame people into voting?

Building on an unusual scientific study about getting out the vote, a new and mysterious nonprofit organization purchased a registration list of Virginia voters that included their voting histories and the voting histories of their neighbors. Next, the organization prepared a mass mailing with those histories and planned to send them out to 350,000 Virginian voters.

The idea? To let them know that someone--including their neighbors--would be watching to see whether they perform their civic duty next Tuesday.

Critics of the idea called it shaming people into voting. Others complained about an invasion of privacy, though the information is already public.

But Debra Girvin, a suburban businesswoman from the suburbs of Richmond who saw herself as nothing more than an idealistic do-gooder--thought this could be a revolutionary exercise in democracy in action.

Her organization, The Know Campaign, was just about to send the mailings, too -- when inquiries from reporters and another look at Virginia's laws on the use of voter rolls made her rethink the project and cancel the mailing.


"It just seemed like a wise thing to do to say, 'Stop the presses,'" Girvin, executive director of The Know Campaign, said Wednesday night. "Our intention was really to do something very positive. I don't want to do bad things. Nor do I want the perception of such."

The mailings would not have pried beyond the curtains of the polling machine. But they relied on data that does take names of the people who have come through the doors at their voting precincts.

"Below is a partial lists of your recent voting history - public information obtained from the Virginia State Board of Elections," the letter says, according to a story in The Virginian-Pilot, which first reported about the project. "We have sent you this information as a public service because we believe that democracy only works when you vote."

Girvin, a human resources consultant with her own company who lives in Chesterfield, said she got the idea after reading about a study by three political scientists, two of whom are from Yale University, who devised an ingenious way to motivate people to vote. The researchers targeted more than 180,000 voters in Michigan. The voters were divided into a control group and four target groups. The control group voted as they normally did. The other four groups received mailings leading up to the election.

One group got a letter every 11 days before a 2006 election urging them to vote because it was their civic duty. The second group received a letter advising them that their voting habits were being observed. The third got a letter notifying them that they should know that their voting habits are a matter of public record. (Though, as in Virginia, whom a person votes for is a secret, of course.) But this group also received the 2004 presidential voting history of everyone in their household. The fourth group received a letter with their 2004 presidential voting history and also that of their neighbors'.

Girvin said she simply wanted to test the idea in this year's gubernatorial race.

"I wish -- and I'm an idealistic person -- but I wish people would care more about who we're voting for and more about working through the democratic process. I hate people on the right screaming and I hate people on the left screaming, and I think there are a lot of people in the middle who are tired of not being heard. And I think they've given up."

Girvin said she purchased the voter rolls from a private company but declined to identify it. She also declined to identify the source of the grants that funded the project because the mailing was canceled and the grantor's money will be returned.


By Anne Bartlett |  October 28, 2009; 8:12 PM ET