No selfies in voting booth, West Virginia says
Source: CBS News
" If you want to share your voting experience on social media, you'll have to find some way other than taking a photo in the voting booth. West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie E. Tennant says it's forbidden.
Tennant said in a news release Friday that it's illegal to photograph any part of the voting process, and no electronic devices or cellphones are allowed in the voting booth."
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/no-selfies-in-voting-booth-west-virginia-says/
This sounds innocuous at first, but is not. I posted this in LBN because of the profound implications this news has for our Presidential election (feel free to move it if there is a more appropriate forum). If no photos are allowed in voting booths, then voters will not be able to document if/when the machines "misbehave" and report votes other than those actually made by the voter. This is a VERY dangerous trend that needs to be stamped out immediately before it spreads to other states. We already have grave concerns, based on experience, that our votes are not being correctly recorded. We must be able to take the photos that document any voting fraud if we have any hope to fix our broken system.
Renew Deal
(81,897 posts)elljay
(1,178 posts)There may be a vote selling problem in Appalachia, but all this law will do is to keep people from committing fraud at the booth. They are still free to do it via absentee ballot, which seems to be the preferred method in W. Virginia. It will, however, prevent people from proving that their vote was flipped.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/selling-votes-is-common-type-of-election-fraud/2012/10/01/f8f5045a-071d-11e2-81ba-ffe35a7b6542_story.html
PSPS
(13,635 posts)feel free to move it elsewhere or make a recommendation.
Judi Lynn
(160,662 posts)If they pull this off, they are committing a crime against US citizens, they are stealing their freedom to verify their own votes in order to prove their votes WERE counted.
As I have always understood it, it's supposed to be everyone's right to both vote, and to have that vote counted.
Thank you, elljay, this is most certainly LBN.
I care not where it is posted, just want the word out there. It is not possible to be too paranoid about our voting rights after what we have seen this primary season!
lostnfound
(16,198 posts)rock
(13,218 posts)be snapshots, not selfies? That's how me and the dictionary see it.
elljay
(1,178 posts)by calling it selfies. According to the article, the law prohibits taking photos of any part of the voting process, which would include a screen registering a vote for Bush when you actually pushed the button for Obama.
How cute. Thanks.
kimbutgar
(21,270 posts)The booth with you breathing over your shoulder? I don't see this as enforceable.
elljay
(1,178 posts)you push the button for Dem. The screen shows a vote for Trump. You snap a photo secretly then call over the poll officials to complain. They say they can't do anything. Now you have a dilemma- if you publish your photo or show it to election officials, you have admitted to a crime. Photos are the best way to document vote flipping and we will really need to be vigilant this November.
nc4bo
(17,651 posts)Flipping. BOE inundated with evidence from hundreds or thousands of people.
They won't do a darned thing.
I say call their bluff, takemthe photos but TURN OFF THE FLASH!!
cannabis_flower
(3,769 posts)You take the picture. You are charged, convicted. You appeal. I bet the ACLU or some other organization will take the case Pro Bono. It needs to be challenged if it prevents a person from proving his vote was switched.
elljay
(1,178 posts)But I am an attorney and know how the system works and what the consequences would be. The decision is not so simple for most people who may not have the ability to go through such a fight. Like a whistleblower, we should have the absolute right to document election fraud without fear of criminal prosecution.
Lars39
(26,117 posts)It's 3 machines in a row on pedestals with *very* short privacy screens on 3 sides of each macine. The person helping has been known to walk behind while people vote.
The machine are also placed so that voters are facing those in line. Privacy? <snort>
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)No photographs, no recording inside the polling place. We have a sign to remind people in our kit, goes on or near the door.
ProfessorGAC
(65,381 posts)Been seeing those signs for decades.
bigwillq
(72,790 posts)It's my ballot. I will do what I wish with it.
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)Redness
(18 posts)The law makes it harder to sell votes by making it easier to steal them. The insanity of such a policy is still clearer when one considers that vote-selling is at worst a (benign) symptom of an undemocratic system. Just as the sale of organs does not create the dire situation in which one's organs are less useful than their price, but rather marginally improves while shockingly revealing it, exploitative vote-selling (in a true democracy, votes would sell for GDP/population, but presumably we're taking about America) exposes a fraudulent democracy while fully compensating the seller's loss of electoral power with an increase in purchasing power (the purest form of obedience to "It's the Economy, Stupid" .
Ironically, the vote's anonymity, which prohibits not only selling but also trading, is one of the reasons electoral votes are so worthless in the first place. The elected face no such restrictions. They trade votes all the time (without which even less would get done than what currently does) and have far greater incentive to sell them. If Gore and Nader voters had traded (the honor system doesn't count), Gore would have won. Instead, Gore voters in safe states and Nader voters in swing states only realized their vote's negligible use-value. Even outside of Electoral College peculiarities, some's political interests are more local than others', and the inability to trade replaces democracy with randomocracy as indifferent votes are weighted equally with others. Compromise candidates, too, would fair better, promoting stability.
Another problem with anonymous voting is that it enables people to harm each other (by proxy) without the natural consequences, and denies them the social benefits of proof that they voted in a socially responsible way. But some call that "coercion", as if to vote were not to select a coercer.
elljay
(1,178 posts)"The law makes it harder to sell votes by making it easier to steal them."
Well said.