I would cast my drop-in-the-ocean vote if it didn’t require needlessly reckless disclosures. The question is- which states offer more privacy than others? These are some of the issues:
publication of residential address
It’s obviously fair enough that you must disclose your residential address to the election authority so you get the correct ballot. But then the address is public. WTF? I’m baffled that the voter turnout isn’t lower.
Exceptionally, Alaska enables voters to also supply a mailing address along with their residential address. In those cases, the residential address is not made public. But still an injustice as PO Boxes are not gratis so privacy has a needless cost.
Some states give the mailing address option exclusively to battered spouses. So if you are a victim of domestic abuse, you can go through a process by which you receive an address for the public voting records that differs from your residential address. Only victims of domestic abuse get privacy that should be given to everyone.
publication of political party affiliation
You are blocked from voting in primary elections unless you register a party affiliation, in which case you can only vote in the primary election of that party. A green party voter cannot vote in the democrat primary despite the parties being similar. The party you register in is public. So e.g. your neighbors, your boss, and your prospective future boss can snoop into your political leanings.
AFAIK, this is the same for all states.
publication of your voting activity (which is used for shaming)
Whether you voted or not is public. If you register to vote but do not vote, it’s noticed. There is a shaming tactic whereby postcards are sent saying “your neighbors the Johnsons at 123 Main St. voted early – will you do your civic duty too? Note that the McKinneys at 125 Main St. have not voted; perhaps you can remind them?” They of course do this in an automated way, so non-voters know their neighbors are receiving postcards that say they did not partake in their civic duty.
forced disclosure to Cloudflare
These states force all voter registrations through Cloudflare:
- Arizona
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- New York
- Ohio
- Rhode Island
- Washington
That’s not just public info, but everything you submit with your registration including sensitive info like DL# and/or SSN goes to Cloudflare Inc. Cloudflare is not only a privacy offender but they also operate a walled garden that excludes some demographics of people from access. Voters can always register on paper, but whoever the state hires to do the data entry will likely use the Cloudflare website anyway. So the only way to escape Cloudflare getting your sensitive info in the above-mentioned states is to not register to vote.
To add to the embarrassment, the “US Election Assistance Commission” (#USEAC) has jailed their website in Cloudflare’s walled garden. Access is exclusive and yet they proudly advertise: “Advancing Safe, Secure, Accessible Elections”.
solutions
What can a self-respecting privacy seeker do? When I read @BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com’s mention¹ of casting a “spoiled” vote which gets counted, I thought I’ll do that… but then realized I probably can’t even get my hands on a ballot if I am not registered to vote. So I guess the penis drawing spoiled vote option only makes a statement about the ballot options. It’s useless for those who want to register their protest against the voter registration disclosures.
Are there any states besides Alaska that at least give voters a way to keep their residential address out of publicly accessible records?
- it was mentioned in this thread: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/8502419
As a Canadian, this whole system sounds as alien as I’m sure ours does to you.
In Canada, we have a lot of discussion and even organized groups surrounding “strategic voting.” Basically, when there is danger of the “wrong” party forming government, which one of the other parties should you vote for to ensure that doesn’t happen while also somewhat reflecting your preferences? This can get as nuanced as trying to hold a party to forming a minority government while giving your preferred party the balance of power, possibly even leading to a true coalition of minority parties forming government.
Do you have anything similar, where you might deliberately register with the “wrong” party in an attempt to control who your real party runs against? This assumes, of course, that you still get to make a free choice in the actual election.
I don’t know enough about the Canadian system to understand your 2nd paragraph, but I can answer this:
There are republicans in the US who will register as democrats in order to vote for the “weaker” candidate in the democratic primary. By weaker, they select the opponent who they think is less likely to win against whoever the republican turns out to be. It’s hard to imagine that enough of them would be able to do that in enough numbers to influence who wins the primary, but it is yet another sneaky tactic that the republicans try.
Thanks.
Regarding that second paragraph:
Imagine 3 parties, Right, Centre, Left. This corresponds very roughly to our Conservative, Liberal, and NDP, respectively.
When you tally up 100 votes, in a riding (voting district), something very close to R=40, C=40, L=20 is quite common. If R=41, C=39, then R wins the riding, even though 59 voters didn’t want them.
Now comes the interesting part. R voters have little desire for C to win and absolutely no desire for L to win, so they stand by R, no matter what. L has no desire for R to win and feel so strongly about it that they will vote C to make sure it doesn’t happen and then hope for a minority government where L has the balance of power so that they can push some of their policies when C forms the government or prevent R from doing “bad stuff” by joining forces with C in opposition.
What’s a minority government? It’s when no other party has won as many ridings as you, but you still didn’t capture a majority of the ridings. Unless the other parties formalize a coalition, you get to form the government.
R minority governments rarely get much done because C and L gang up on them. But C minority governments get plenty done because they are willing to do some of what L wants in exchange for their support.
And finally, that gets us to strategic voting. It’s mostly about keeping R from winning a given riding to prevent them from forming any government, especially by winning a majority of ridings. Do if C looks close enough to R then L voters will vote C to prevent ~~C ~~ R from winning. If looks like the best chance, then C will vote L.
Yes it’s complicated to keep the dreaded Right under control, which is why there are organisations dedicated to voting strategies and massive calls for voting reform to some kind of proportional system. The reason it’s so difficult to get voting reform in Canada is that R might never form a government again, so they lobby very hard against it.
I lost you near the end on “L voters will vote C to prevent C from winning.” I guess you meant to prevent R from winning?
It’s interesting that L is big enough to not simply be absorbed by C. There is a green party in the US, but they’re too small to take a significant office so green simply always vote for democrats. The natural forces of what you describe has forced the country into a bipolar 2 party system. It’s interesting that that has not happened in Canada.
It could be related to voter turnout. In the US republicans are hardcore voters. They are vastly outnumbered but liberals are a mix of lazy voters and voters who are just bad with paperwork and can’t get their shit together to get registered and get to the polls (often attributed to being overworked… can’t afford to leave their shit job to stand in line at the polls). So republicans only take power when dems don’t make it to the polls. Hence why republicans have a shit ton of anti-voting tactics to increase the procedural burden of voting, blocking Sunday voting, etc. If voter turnout were higher, I wonder if the green party would be bigger with more influence comparable to Canada’s NDP.
Yes, corrected. Thanks.
Historically, our left has been far too large, far too radical, and far too vocal to be absorbed. There was a point at which that looked possible. Then the original right party (Progressive Conservatives, centre right) got taken over by an extreme right party (Reform, but keeping the “Conservative” name for brand continuity, hiding their roots). That lit a fire under the left (NDP), leaving the centre left (Liberals) scrambling for relevance, which they did manage to find.
The reason we have so many parties is that our terms of federation, our constitution, and the parliamentary system itself make it easy for regional parties to form and then gain national prominence. For example:
the NDP started as the CCF, an Alberta party, a version of which managed to gain provincial power in Saskatchewan, then introduce single-payer health care in Saskatchewan.
The Reform party started as an Alberta-only party that ultimately did the equivalent of a hostile takeover of the Progressive Conservatives.
The Bloc Quebecois is a Quebec-only party that manages to stay nationally relevant due to the size, population, and culture of Quebec.
When I say “province-only”, I don’t mean an actual provincial party that runs in provincial elections, but a party that is registered at the national level, but with few or maybe no candidates outside the founding province.
Our provincial parties and national parties are kept separate. Thus the British Columbia NDP does not answer to the federal NDP. In my memory, it was pretty much a given that Saskatchewan voters would vote NDP (left, but not hard left) in provincial elections and approximately split their votes between the original Progressive Conservatives (centre right) and Liberals (centre left), even though there was a federal NDP.
If different ways of creating federated systems exist on a spectrum, Canada would fall somewhere between the American system and the European Union.