Given the audience here, you probably did. I know I did and statistically I’m representative of the members of this board.
But this year, more than I ever have before, I am bombarded with TV and YouTube commercials telling me that while who I vote for is private, the fact that I voted is public information and my friends, neighbors and family can look up that information.
So what? That’s the way it’s been for a very long time. What I’m curious about is why it’s being repeated at every commercial break. I searched the name at the end of the commercial (Future Forward) and find that, while it’s not a Democratic organization, it is a super PAC getting paid by the Democrats to do these commercials.
And that leaves my question: Why? I can understand if they want to endorse a candidate. Heck, I can even understand if they want to spread mis-information (I am not in favor of this, you realize) but why are they spending so much information to parrot that whether I voted is public information?
I found this article from the NY Times talking about them but not answering my basic question about the focus of these particular ads and I’m curious as to what they are attempting to accomplish and further, how that general information is likely to influence me to vote for their preferred candidate who is not mentioned in the ad.
And just to make matters more interesting, last night I saw a new ad suggesting that I might want to take advantage of this free information and look up friends, family members, neighbors to see if they’ve voted. Good heavens, what the hell would I want to do such a thing for? Feel free to tell me how you would respond to a friend, family member or neighbor contacting you and telling you that they looked you up on an online service and wanted to discuss your voting status. TBH I don’t know if this commercial was the same group because I didn’t get to the screen fast enough to read at the end of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
The idea is to convince you to vote. The ads are probably being shown in states where having more voters will benefit Dems than Republicans, although I’m not thinking of what that would be (not enough coffee yet).
Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown ordered a D.C. organization to stop sending threatening letters to Maryland voters who may choose to not vote in this year’s election.
The Office of the Attorney General (AOG) and the State Board of Elections (SBE) said they received several complaints about the letters sent by the Center of Voter Information/Voter Participation Center (CVI/VPC) claiming to be “Voting Report Cards.”
These letters identified whether the recipients voted in each of the last four elections and compared their voting histories to the records of two of their neighbors on the same street.
The AG’s office sent them a cease and desist order, fortunately.
When I did the “postcards to strangers urging them to vote” they gave us three messages to choose from to write on the postcards. One of them was this basic message: who you vote for is private, but whether you voted is public information. I didn’t pick that one, as it seemed creepy and threatening, and that was the last thing I would want to read on a nice friendly postcard from a stranger.
I still think it is a strategic mistake to be that direct about it. On the other hand, I think it’s salutary that in general the message is out there.
I’m picturing one of those commercials, like for life insurance, where family and friends are gathered in the widow’s kitchen, and one of them says “Oh Helen, I’m so sorry about George. But I’m wondering why he didn’t vote in the last three elections?” Widow starts crying and runs into her room and closes the door. Voiceover: “Don’t leave your loved ones to answer awkward questions after you’re gone. Get out and vote!”
Ditto, I felt exactly the same way. It sounds like a goon is going to come out and break your kneecaps or set your house on fire.
Weirdly, the organization behind it claimed that that was the most successful of the 3 messages. They must have meant in focus groups, because they have no way of knowing which messages we chose to send.
Probably their emphasis is on the part that who you voted for is private. They’re including the information that the fact of your voting is public so they won’t be accused of spreading blatant lies, as they will if they just say “remember that your vote is private!”
– of course, these days they may be accused of spreading blatant lies even when they’re doing no such thing.
ETA: And I haven’t seen the ad, or the postcards, so they may not be phrasing it well.
It’s based on a c. 2008 study, IIRC. Here’s a related 2017 study along the same lines:
First paragraph:
A burgeoning academic literature investigates the extent to which voter turnout increases in the wake of social pressure, the forceful assertion of prescriptive norms. Social pressure can be exerted in many ways: by scolding citizens who do not uphold their civic duty, by monitoring compliance with civic norms, or by disclosing to others whether citizens actually fulfill their obligation (Green and Gerber, 2010). Field experiments testing the effects of social pressure date back to Gosnell’s (1927) study of the 1924 election, inwhich he mailed Chicagoans political cartoons depicting non-voters as unpatriotic “slackers.” Informing citizens that turnout will be monitored using public records dates back at least to Gross et al. (1974), who tested the effect of such warnings on voter turnout in college elections. Decades later, this line of inquiry was revived by Gerber et al. (2008), whose experimental study of social pressure sparked a series of follow-up experiments that shed light on the conditions under which social pressure’s effects are large or small.
I applaud the good intentions of any organization that encourages people to vote, but I agree that some of the methods described here are creepy.
What they should be doing instead is informing citizens about the importance of voting and how their democracy depends on it. If they’re going to make threats, maybe the threat should be a symbolic effort to lobby for mandatory voting, which some countries have. I say “symbolic” because that could never happen in the US of A where everyone will always have the right to foist off their civic responsibility on their neighbour, and of course their neighbour will have the God-given right to do the same.
The most practical solution, in my view, is to make voting as easy as possible. I am constantly appalled by the long lineups to vote that I see all over the US, which seems to be due at least partially to Republican efforts to make voting as difficult as possible.for ordinary people.
For the beginning part of the OP, I not only did know but I got the records when I was helping a friend running for school board. You get name, address, party preference, and a list of recent elections and if the person voted in them, all in a spreadsheet.
I wrote some Perl scripts to extract the information he wanted.
From chela:
are we sure our votes are pubic record? I know our party affiliation is public but I don’t think our votes are public. WHere is that information?
As mentioned by Measure_for_Measure and in the OP, who you voted for is not public. You can find out who voted from a number of websites. In my state (Arizona) the information is available from the Secretary of States office, a sub-domain of the county dot gov site, and several other sites I found with a Google search of “list of voters in [state].”
thats what I thought, I have no problem with the world knowing I voted in every election since I turned 18.
I decided to look up certain MAGA members in my family. I have their deets, but nothing is showing up surely they are registered? LOL if they said fuck it.
A generic person is far more likely to respond positively to a friend, relative, or neighborhood saying “I voted; have you?” than to a stranger asking the same question.
The whole point is for generic you to open that conversation with people who you know who you also know haven’t voted. Even if you never tell them you know that.
And of course the assumption is you’ll be smart enough to preferentially talk to friends, family, and neighbors who you think are likely to vote your preferred way.
So this ad can be bombarded into bluer areas where the data shows blue-registered voters are lagging in actually voting & be confident the net effect will be to recruit more blue vote-getter-outers, and also more blue voters directly.
But this ad gave me the creepy feeling that they were suggesting I should call up and say “I see you haven’t voted.”
I want to point out that one person I would be likely to call would be my younger brother; so with regards to George Orwell there’s a potential Big Brother joke there.
In some states, your primary selection is public record: a known direction.
From that choice, they’ll make the connection, guessing your vote in the general election.
