First off, let me say that I do not support this at all, but it does seem to me to be the only logical conclusion to dealing with racists if your goal is to drive them out of polite society and into the underground.
A little context: generally we deal with racists and even to a large extent less hateful nationalists by making their views not only not okay, but actively dangerous to express publicly. This means that generally, the only people who will express such views publicly are those who have little to lose: poor rednecks and billionaires with FU money(Donald Trump).
But I don’t think there’s much of a correlation between being very poor or very rich and being racist. Sure, ignorance plays a large role so it would seem intuitive that more poor people than middle class people should hold racist views. But there should still be a lot of people who do live in the mainstream of society that also are racist but just don’t talk about it much except among people they feel they can talk to without retaliation, like family or close friends who believe as they do. In other words, racist in private.
So now we get to the ballot box, where people can cast a vote for a racist candidate without any fear or social retaliation whatsoever. And Trump won.
Let me clarify that I do not believe all, or even most, Trump supporters are racists, or even nationalists. But there is a strain of white resentment and America Firstism running through a large number of mainstream Trump voters. Certainly enough that it makes up for Trump’s margin of victory several times over.
So now we get to the point of my OP, finally:
if we didn’t have a secret ballot, would Trump have lost?
In a world where we now consider social retaliation against people for their political views, including job loss and boycotts(if they are an actor or musician) justified, what is the justification for the secret ballot?
If votes were public, how much would that reduce voter turnout? Would it be more of a deterrent to certain voters or probably affect both parties equally? I think that it would certainly have had an impact on some Trump voters, although perhaps that would have been primarily concentrated in heavily blue areas where being pro-Trump could carry consequences and so not affecte the electoral vote, but just given Clinton a much larger popular vote win.
You realize, of course, that by eliminating the secret ballot, you’re also inviting a knock on your door the night before the election and a group of unfriendly people telling you how they think you should vote tomorrow, and a follow-up visit the next day if you didn’t.
I’d say the justification for a secret ballot is that we live in a world where we now consider social retaliation against people for their political views to be justified.
I agree with you completely, but if we’re being logically consistent, then I don’t see how the ballot is somehow sacred. If people can be punished for their campaign donations, public statements, or even private statements if caught on tape, I’m not sure why the ballot would be protected.
“Now”? There have always been social consequences for having unpopular (or actually subversive) political views. Royalists, abolitionists, anarchists, labor organizers, communists, integrationists, have all had to face social ostracism, economic hardship (job loss, boycott) and even official persecution when their particular viewpoints have been outside of power. So that’s one of the reasons to have the secret ballot in the first place.
What’s different “now” are the tools available for the purposes of social censure.
True, it’s not new, but I think it was also just an emotional and often ignorant reaction back then, whereas today I think it’s something people try to intellectually justify and turn into a crusade against certain viewpoints they’d like to drive out of the public sphere. It’s more of a coordinated strategy now.
While those may have been organized, they also were not based on a societal consensus that it’s normal to drive your political enemies out of society. I think we actually went through a period from the 1960s to the 1980s where you had to say something truly horrible to suffer that kind of retaliation. That probably grew out of the overall liberalizing of the culture during that period. But since the 90s or so, we’re swinging back to enforced ways of thinking, and the idea of socially responsible consumerism and investing has moved beyond boycotting companies who DO bad things into boycotting companies whose CEOs donate to the wrong candidates(or ballot initiatives) or are too public about their allegiances.
I see only two ways this can end: either by pushing back against this and getting us back on the track we were on, where it became safer and safer to have controversial views and express them, or we just go all the way and abolish the secret ballot and subject everyone equally to the risk of having a public opinion on the issues and candidates of the day.
Donald Trump wasn’t elected by a secret ballot. You can go online and easily find the names of the three hundred and four people who elected him President.
The primary change that a public ballot would set into being would be to make the buying and selling of votes simple and straightforward. If anyone can see who you voted for you can prove to the purchaser of your vote that you voted as requested.
Therefore:
Probably not. His pockets weren’t deep enough. I’m not sure which set of people would have offered top dollar for votes for their preferred candidate.
To avoid blatant buying and selling of votes.
I would expect turnout to go up considerably with the new financial incentive to vote.
Far from ending the trend you discern, abolishing the secret ballot would rather magnify and intensify it. as well has having other consequences, like handing elections to those with plenty of money to bribe voters and/or a willingness and ability to intimidate voters. It’s only rational to advocate ending the secret ballot if you regard these as desirable outcomes which you wish to bring about.
No. This is the worst idea I’ve heard all week, and it’s been a week with some really doozies. Abolishing the secret ballot would not even accomplish the goal you stated “drive [racists] out of polite society and into the underground”. How would this have worked if your proposed rule had been in effect for 2016. Given your post #4, it seems that you view Donald Trump as the racists’ candidate. He got ~63 million votes. How the fuck are you going to drive 63 million people “out of polite society and into the underground” even if you’ve got all their names, addresses, and phone numbers in a neat little Excel spreadsheet? And don’t forget, they’d have all your names, addresses, and phone numbers in a neat little Excel spreadsheet too.
I have issues with secret ballots for entirely different reasons. I don’t trust the counters not to fake the results.
I don’t think public ballots would deter racism in general. For most of the USA’s history, the process **kunilou **describes in post #3 would come into play and reinforce, no, enforce one-party rule in each district.
So I don’t trust either secret or non-secret ballots. I guess I really don’t think democracy can work.
In most countries that have the secret ballot, the opening of the ballot boxes and the counting of the ballots is conducted in public, and under the observation of agents for the candidates.
It is almost as if there are no other examples in the world, like in the Western Europe, of the exclusion of the racist movements from the polite politics. No thing exists outside of the american imaginations.
Driving racists out of polite society and into the underground is the job of society, not of government. Removing secret ballots for the purpose of flushing out people we don’t agree with is one of the most un-American ideas I’ve recently heard.