Although foreign information campaign has targeted 2022 US midterm elections up to a limmit, most of the pressure on the US voting infrastructure comes from inside the house. Violent domestic threats against election officials has skyrocketed across the country in the past few years, endangering workers and increasingly driving them out of the profession. And as early voting began across the United States in recent days, sporadic incidents at polling stations and polling places have put voters at an advantage. Last week, a federal judge in Arizona notably ordered armed members of a group called Clean Elections USA to stop carrying guns and wear body armor within 250 feet of voting boxes.
Officials and researchers say the voting will be safe and not destabilize the vast majority of US voters. They also emphasize, as is the case in 2020, that US elections are in fact safe and strict they used to be thanks to a number of initiatives, including efforts to eliminate voting machines that do not produce paper backups and the expanded use of post-election audits, including audits that “reduce the risk of “by the gold standard. However, the erosion of public trust in any electoral system as well as a major threat to the democracy on which it is based is real-world interference. With so much at stake, the 2022 US midterm elections are highlighting the importance of a core measure of US voting rights: secret ballot.
“The secret ballot is really profound – it is important to capture the real will,” said Ben Adida, chief executive officer of VotingWorks, a nonprofit that makes open-source voting equipment. everyone’s affairs. “Those who break your kneecap or threaten you at the polls represent one extreme, but there are also more subtle ways that undue influence can influence the outcome of an election. nominate. Think of people who support a candidate but don’t feel strongly about it. They might think, ‘Well, do I really want to get into a fight with my spouse or employer? It’s just one vote. “
Until the 1890s, voting in the United States was a local, public event, conducted orally or using paper tickets. And efforts to conduct secret ballots using the now-familiar “Australian ballot” method were controversial at first because the spectacle and transparency of public voting was so closely associated with democratic culture. of the United States.
However, it is possible that secret ballots provide two core defenses of democracy. The first and perhaps more intuitive benefit concerns the privacy of individuals. Whether using a voting machine or filling out a scannable form, US voters cast their ballots at polls in private booths. And while they must register to vote in a database that is usually public, the votes they actually cast are completely unrelated to their identity. This means that even if a family member, acquaintance or political member is voting at the same time as you, they won’t be able to really know for sure how you voted. you the opportunity to vote however you choose.
“There’s a challenge when you can’t connect a ballot to that person, but we’ve largely addressed that with the following audits,” said Lawrence Norden, senior director of government and elections. vote and check if we are recording votes correctly. program at the Brennan Center at New York University School of Law. “For most of American history, elections were held in the open, and there was a reason for us to switch to secret ballots. Part of that is because people are subject to violence and intimidation, and indeed polling stations can turn violent.”
