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Comment by moritonal | Hacker News Reader

It worries me that you don't see how fundamentally that undermines the point of democracy.

It's illegal to take a photo of your ballot to prove who you voted for, think about why. Because if you could then the local crime-ring would force every person they can intimidate to go vote for their boss and take a photo to prove it or the thugs will hurt their kids.

Or maybe think about the pressure some people surrounded by family and friends of the opposite party feel. Sure they will wave the right coloured flag and throw dirt at the TV with their friends at the "wrong" guy, but when safe and sound in the voters box they can do what they like. Imagine if all your friends "opted" into revealing their vote and you didn't.

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It worries me that you failed at basic reading comprehension, yet still attacked me for what I overtly disclaimed:

> I'm not saying this is a good policy, just a hard technical tradeoff of what would be required for verifiable voting without cryptography.

It's a hard technical fact, that's all I was saying. Either trusted third parties (that are currently being maligned to shake our faith in the voting system), open ledger voting, or steep cryptography. I'm personally in favor of the cryptography, but I'm also able to understand it. Unfortunately as it goes against making the system widely understandable, I'd expect the same kind of "fake news" attacks were seeing presently.

FWIW mail in voting also gets rid of the secret ballot. Organizations haven't really adapted to taking advantage of this, but we're on borrowed time. The fundamental problem is that our current system relies on trusted third parties, and that trust is breaking down.

It's legal in lots of places https://www.vox.com/21523858/ballot-selfies-state-rules

Neat, and in the same article it talks about how it's a bad thing due to voter intimidation, with examples of it happening.

On the other hand you have no proof of who you voted for, and this have no way to determine if the vote was counted was the one you made

Wow. I mean, I'm very sympathetic that people should get private votes, but your description of someone faking their opinion and throwing dirt makes me sort of hate the person in your example. Mark Twain comes to mind. What an interesting way to garner sympathy.

More of your friends than you think hide their true thoughts and opinions from you, because they (often correctly) expect social censure if they reveal them.

What about a mother who doesn't want her kids in the army to go to war but the whole house supports a war-monger?

Or doctor who has a single opinion about a practice they want legalised, but doesn't want to admit it to anyone.

A gay teen surrounded by homophobic people who wants to legalise their sexuality but has to fake it and shout at rallies because otherwise people might question what's up.

Those weren't hard to come up with...

What about them? Their valid reasons do not make their actions palatable.

Why is it okay then for the votes of the elected legislators to be public? Wouldn’t all your arguments apply equally (or much more, given how much more powerful their individual votes are) to legislators?

I think there's a reasonable case that legislators should have a secret ballot so as to reduce their vulnerability to lobbyists and donors. Not sure if I agree but it's a reasonable position. I don't think there's any major country like that though. A representative volunteered and publically campaigned as being for X, Y, and Z, so either they vote for those positions and the public gets what they asked for, or they don't and they lose their job. In practice, life is more complicated of course, but that's the idea.

Unlike voters, legislators are expected to be individually accountable. There are reasons why secret ballot is possible in parliament, but considered exceptional (or shady) measure.

Lobbyists and donors vulnerability is better alleviated by fixed salary and functional impartial criminal/justice system.

I think the expectation of accountability is the key difference, but I’m not sure why we don’t expect individual voters to be accountable in any way for their political beliefs and votes, even to light social criticism.

Assuming for the sake of argument that light social criticism in response to one's voting preferences being publicly known is always a good thing, can you suggest a means where someone can be exposed to this alone, excluding all the other potential abuses sketched in the comments above? I don't think it is possible.

Added to that, it could lead to 'always on' political discourse, which tends to be divisive and disruptive. This is the reason that companies prohibit political discussion in the workplace, or family get-togethers can become nightmares when strongly opinionated relatives clash.

It also excludes the possibility of agreeing to disagree, which is based on an acknowledgement of human fallibility, that people have intrinsic worth apart from their opinions, and that a diversity of opinions may be overall more beneficial than strict uniformity.

I wasn’t suggesting some database of everyone’s votes to facilitate social criticism. I’m just referring to people who complain about getting criticism from friends/family/peers for certain political beliefs which were shared explicitly.

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