It's strange to think I once opposed Ed on some of these points... though that was years ago.
Peter Zbornik said: > Talking about history, I'll share what I learned about the secret > ballot too: "The use of a secret ballot in America was first deemed > necessary to protect the voting rights of recently freed slaves > after the Civil War. Voter intimidation during southern > reconstruction was rampant, with African American first-time voters > being threatened with physical violence, even lynching, based on how > their publicly known ballots were cast. In 1892, Grover Cleveland > became the first United State president elected by secret ballot." > http://www.sosballot.org/frequently-asked-questions/ I'm afraid that's not a reliable source. Most of the freed slaves were unable to read. India takes special care in the design of its ballots to ensure the illiterate can vote, but the former Confederate states often had the opposite intention. There is no single reason why they adopted the secret ballot, but disenfranchising the newly emancipated slaves was one of them [1]. It was called the "Australian ballot" back then and this an exerpt of a Democratic campaign song of 1892: [3][4] The Australian ballot works like a charm It makes them think and scratch And when a Negro gets a ballot He has certainly met his match. They sang this in Arkansas where the secret ballot was enacted in 1891. "Under the law, an illiterate man who needed help to vote was required to apply to two of the precinct judges, who would then have to order all other voters to vacate the polling place before the two judges could prepare the ballot for the voter. Of course, this process naturally discouraged most illiterate men from even going to the polls." [2] As a consequence, "the percentage of black men who managed to vote dropped from 71 to 38." [4] So it happened that the secret ballot helped the ruling Democratic party tighten its grip on power in the south, the Republicans being the party of Lincoln and the Union during the war. Local details vary [1], but the general pattern around the world is one in which the secret ballot (as with other modern electoral reforms) serves to enhance the power of the political elite. [5] In fact, that power has no other basis than the restrictions imposed on electors, or would-be electors (the who, where, when and how of voting). Currently those restrictions are about as tight as can be, and the power of the elite is at a peak. They go into the booth alone Their ticket to prepare And as soon as five minutes are out They have got to git from there. [3] Yet it's all a house of cards. The restrictions are an illusion. Voting can never actually be restricted in a modern society. Maybe this is why the Germans are ahead of others in this field, because "vote" and "voice" are the same word in German (Stimme). It must be dawning on them that guarantees of free speech *also* apply to voting. I'll reply to your other points in a while, Peter. (Freedom of speech was enabled by technology and demonstrated in practice long before it was recognized as a human right. And I'm terribly late on delivering that beta we were speaking of.) Mike [1] "There are four interpretations to explain why [Arkansas' secret ballot] election law was enacted in 1891: to quell the growing momentum of the agrarian third-party and Republican fusion movement, to eliminate the black vote (particularly in local contests in eastern Arkansas), to centralize political control of the state into the hands of a few elite Democrats, and to remove the need for federal election oversight (reform). Various historians of the Southern disfranchisement have tended to stress one of these explanations over the others depending on the historian’s particular ideology. Recent research of the Election Law of 1891 points to all four of the explanations working in different regions of Arkansas independently, based largely on population demographics and local political concerns in various sections of the state." [2] [2] http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4033 [3] Paul M. Schwartz. 2002. Voting technology and democracy. N.Y.U. Law Review. *75*. pp. 625-698. (see p. 679) http://www.paulschwartz.net/pdf/votingtech.pdf [4] Jill Leport. 2011. The Whites of Their Eyes. The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History. Princeton University Press. (see pp. 111-2) books.google.ca/books?id=e4XQLrY9T3oC [5] Frank O'Gorman. 2007. The secret ballot in nineteenth century Britain. *In* Cultures of voting: the hidden history of the secret ballot. pp. 16-42. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info