All over the country there are stirrings: growing numbers of American citizens are realizing that our innate trust in bureaucracies is not only misplaced but also potentially dangerous. As voters encounter problem after problem in state after state, those stirrings are sounding more and more like responsible, conscious responses to gross silencing of citizen voices.
One of the simplest and most poignant argument in response to this broken trust is this:
Why do voters get no proof of their transaction?
When that sank in for me, really sank in, I felt like a fool for never having questioned it myself. As Americans we value privacy and could counter-argue that we don’t want a record of who we’ve voted for in the hands of anyone but ourselves. And that is fair, and I actually quite agree with it. But a receipt, something so simple we get one whenever we conclude any transaction and which can be set to include any information we want (or don’t want!), gives us our own record. There is no requirement to trust a machine to perform some secret magic: if the information isn’t correct, we know it! We can file for redress!
There are shady things going on at the polls this year: machines which don’t “allow” voters to vote for particular candidates; unofficial and incomplete ballots being handed out in front of polls and allowed for submission by workers; misinformation about delegates; shorter hours and changes in locations; party switches and voter purges; voters being turned away when workers don’t know about affidavit ballots; affidavits not being counted.
While the poll receipt wouldn’t solve most of these, the fact at hand which thrills me right now is that people are questioning things they never before questioned, are outraged by being silenced.
It’s at least a step in the right direction.
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