Just a reminder: the secret ballot is secret to protect those, whose genuine vote would otherwise be manipulated (/forced/extorted/...)

Not every individual voter might need that level of protection for themselves.

But every individual voter requires this level of protection for the whole process.

Phrased differently: for some, anonymity in voting is nice. For others, it is necessary to get their genuine vote. For democracy to function, we need everyone's genuine vote.

Thus: we need voter anonimity that cannot be rescinded by the voter - nor by anyone else.

For mail-in voting (which is how the majority of people in King County vote), what makes the ballot secret? Can someone be forced or extorted to fill in the ballot in front of their persecutor?

>For democracy to function, we need everyone's genuine vote.

I'd honestly like to see anonymous voting in the house and Senate. This would vastly reduce the influence of political parties. Yes, it means that it's harder for constituents to track what their representative actually does, but the way modern politics works, "what their representative actually does" is essentially vote the party line on almost every vote.

The Mail In Ballot procedure here uses a double-envelope system.

The inner envelope has the vote (with a matching identifier tab pulled off). It is supposed to contain only the vote.

The other envelope contains the inner envelope and this envelope is marked with the address of the voter, and a legally binding contract (signed by the voter and/or representative witnesses if they are unable).

My belief is that the validation process for these ballots includes multiple stages and probably blinding, wherein, the outer envelope is authenticated as a registered voter and that it contains something likely to be a vote (there's a small viewing circle). This would then be stripped and the trusted inner envelope, still sealed, added to a tabulation bin. Said tabulation bin would then be counter later in an anonomized manor.

When someone says, "America isn't ready for online voting." I hear, "The interests who already buy and aggregate enough information to have the results ahead of time want to stay 1 step ahead of regulators."

Both of those things have happened with voting in the past, which is why ballots are secret.

It's perfectly legal to take a selfie at the ballot box showing that you voted a particular way. It's feasible that some party could anonymously pay, say, $20 for every selfie they are sent with the way of voting that they ask for. Sure, it's illegal but so would be doing the same thing if the ballot wasn't secret.

If you tick a disclosure box and void your ballot, then that can be tracked.

That's happening right now. Not in the past. That's why we need enough people who aren't in danger to volunteer their data.

> World governments and wealthy private interests are right now paying huge sums of money

You are describing a different problem than the one the parent comment is describing. The latter is lobbying, which can be prevented through legal restrictions and auditing to make sure those restrictions are being adhered to.

The former is outright vote-buying. People who are looking for money can, and will sell their votes for money, goods, or jobs. This happens in less rigorous democracies like India today. This happened in the US as well with the old-time patronage machines in big cities. Even if you don't necessarily need to sell your vote to get any job, you might lose a job offer to someone else who was willing to demonstrate that they voted "correctly".

The existence of one problem does not minimize the other, and we should seek to strike as many impurities from the process as possible, rather than trading one devil for another.

For the USA, I no longer think polls are useful predictors, nor are exit polls useful audits or verification. For polling to work (be useful), like is done in Germany, requires the whole system to be designed as such.

Our gold standard is the Australian Ballot. Private voting, public counting. We weaken this system to extend the franchise, eg absentee ballots.

But the real kicker is our FPTP (winner takes all) election system. It's so brittle. The inevitable error rate intrinsic in any form of voting (casting ballots) coupled with durvergers law virtually ensures drama.

Said another way, my militant defense of the Australian Ballot, this recurring national spaz attack, would be mooted by switching to a more robust form of elections. Ranked choice and proportional representation have the most interest and support, though I prefer Approval Voting for a better balance of fairness and simplicity.

Back to your point about disclosure, if I follow you: I very much would like to see tech, POCs, research into time boxed privacy. Like maybe all election materials, including ballots, are released when an election is certified. Versus hidden and then destroyed a few weeks later. My motivation is to find other balances, equilibria, between people's privacy (and protection) against society's need for confidence in the results.

I prefer the "Path Voting" method (which I have to google for with wikipedia path voting every time, since I can't remember how to spell the inventor's name). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method

"The Schulze method (/ˈʃʊltsə/) is an electoral system developed in 1997 by Markus Schulze that selects a single winner using votes that express preferences. The method can also be used to create a sorted list of winners. The Schulze method is also known as Schwartz Sequential dropping (SSD), cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping (CSSD), the beatpath method, beatpath winner, path voting, and path winner."

I am explicitly not shutting you down. I shared my views and why. I encouraged you to do the same.

For instance, one cheap and obvious way to improve uitilityof exit polling would be to implement compulsory voting.

Also, please work on a campaign. To the best of my knowledge, modern campaigns don't rely much on polling. Most effort is put into GOTV (voter identification and balloting chasing).

Edit: Oops. I'm not familiar with Republican campaigns. In my area, their GOTV is less potent and they rely far more on advertising. So they might still be more reliant on polling. It's a good question for me to follow up.

Opinion polls are still useful in other ways. Depending on who's paying. Sanity checks. Push polling. Message crafting. Talking points, a la Voted San Fran's Favorite Pho Restaurant. Feeding corporate media's horserace narrative. Policy groups trying to gather intel on both opponents and allies. Consultants fleecing noob candidates. Arm waving because old school operators expect it.

YMMV.

This is not my first brush with radical voting ideas and I'm not afraid to put them into practice when legal signs off :-p

These days I settle for election judging. Isn't that a scary thought?

You should google project Houdini, narwhal, and orca