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Voting Ballots

A few days ago I commented that I support the states which have made it illegal for people to take photos of their ballots. A quick explanation:

I am pragmatic about democracy, particularly at the top levels of government; while I am absolutely committed to democracy in the workplace (instead of ownership permitting petty dictatorship), I'm more flexible about government at large. However, if democracy is to be done, I believe it should be done right; a sham democracy is worse than no democracy.

Two features of a well-ordered democracy are:

  • No buying of votes
  • No private or public coercion over voting, either beforehand or afterwards
(there are many other such features, I am highlighting these two for this discussion)

In order to implement these, particularly in a society where communities and families and the like may not obey the law and actually attempt to control voting behaviour, people need to have the ability to lie about how they voted; in order for that ability to substantially exist, they must not have the ability to prove how they voted, or other parties could (and would) demand that they take such evidence and show them, either to attain favours or avoid sanction. By making recording of ballots illegal, the integrity of the voting process is safeguarded (at what I consider an acceptable cost to self-expression).

Preventing private coercion is something I consider potentially legitimate reason to limit some kinds of choices. In my set of positions, this position is related to:

  • Why I support banning face-covering veils
  • Why I support banning of prostitution
Both of these positions have a lot of their own specifics, of course


Re. prostitution:
Even a purely self-employed, small business model?
Even that; sex is special, and the wage-slavery critique, in my book, has full weight on sexual topics. If someone ever, for economic reasons, is effectively forced into sex work (or to continue sex work for lack of developed options), that is more unacceptable than barring everyone from sex work.