Administration and Cost of Elections Project/ Media and Elections

http://www.aceproject.org/main/english/me/mea01.htm

International Law

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948 is the definitive statement of principle on human rights. … Article 21, guarantees the right to take part in periodic secret [ballot]elections

The UDHR imposes obligations upon all members of the international community. But, as a declaration, it is only what is termed customary international law. With the adoption of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966, these same provisions were amplified and given the force of binding and enforceable law over all those states that ratified….Article 25 of the ICCPR states in part:

Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions mentioned in Article 2 [distinctions of any kind such as race, colour, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status] and without unreasonable restrictions:

…(b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors.

[...]

The main regional human rights treaties – the European Convention on Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights – contain a similar combination of guarantees of the right to freedom of expression and information and the right to political participation without discrimination. [All have boilerplate secret ballot election provisions essentially the same as UDHR and ICCPR]—————-

There are many more examples. The nations of the world seem to approach unanimous consensus on this point. I don’t know why things developed as they did.

m. townes:

I read your excellent article. You seem to know your way around election history. What do you make of this?

The ‘not in my name’ anti-Iraq-war slogan in Britain suggests that, in at least some contexts, many people do.

I can’t understand how anyone could argue that voting is not about coercion. Virtually everything in politicis is about coercion, monopoly on violence; governing is a form of coercion

While we may get into semantics over what is politics v. say civic or public action, much in politics is persuasive rather than coercive and even at the organizational level, voluntary rather than compulsory mechanisms can be put into place to govern.

Though may I ask, given your voting record, whether you still wish to see the Labour manifesto of 1983 implemented?

I don’t think you necessarily owe me an explanation why you voted this way or another, other than the obvious “I find candidate (or party) A more appealing, more in line with my worldview”; nevertheless, I think you could make a good case against secret ballot in a “well-ordered society”.

Here’s what Wiki says:

One response to the issue of political privacy as such is that any political privacy outside the expression of voting is inappropriate. Bernard Crick, for instance, a notable advocate of politics as the necessarily-public form of ethics, defined politics itself as “resolution of moral conflict, or ethics, in public”. From this point of view, one may have no right to political privacy, and even such measures as a secret ballot may be denied based on the grounds that political differences between neighbors or friends must be open, in order to avoid over-empowering some central authority.

Fear of such a central authority, that argument goes, is the problem, and knowing there is no political privacy, people become maximally motivated to ensure that the central authority has no arbitrary power. Junius said that “the subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.” Knowing that such measures might be directed against oneself may be the strongest possible motivation to avoid advising them against others.

I think Michael Otsuka may have a fairly conclusive reply to the argument Harry presented, but #44 is obviously wrong because of what #45 says. Legislators aren’t pure delegates, and even if they were, they would still have publicly expressed views on a large number of issues.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345 (1921)

Harry:

Your post raises interesting questions related to the secret ballot, most of which had never occurred to me. I checked at what I have found to be an excellent resource on voting and elections, the Administration and Conduct of Elections web, which offers a huge amount of information on election theory and practice around the world. The following summarizes the history, purpose, and present status of the secret ballot:

History of Corruption and Its Regulation

Today, universal suffrage has been achieved in most parts of the world. The election process has evolved from elections by a handful of privileged elite men to one where leaders are chosen based on a system of one-person-one-vote. The elite’s control over the government has weakened as the world has moved toward democracy by the expansion of suffrage, increased public political participation, and more competitive elections. Since some elites could not survive the competitive elections, they have turned to using election fraud as a means to decrease the degree of competition and sustain their power. This fraud can include bribery, undue influence, ballot stuffing, physical intimidation, and dissemination of false information. As methods and the degree of fraud grew, governments found it necessary to regulate fraud and maintain elections free and fair. Governments had various reasons to hold free and fair elections, for instance, to gain national or international respect and legitimacy.38

Significant attempts to regulate electoral fraud emerged in the late 19th century. France introduced the concept of the secret ballot in 1789; however, Australia was the first country to actually employ it in the late 1850s.39 40 The purpose of the secret ballot was to discourage bribery and intimidation. It was intended to reduce the likelihood that others would know for whom the bribed and/or intimidated citizen had voted. The United Kingdom adopted the secret ballot in 1872, and most countries in Western Europe followed in the late 19th century.41

http://www.aceproject.org/main/english/ei/ei60.htm

However, what is interesting is that in the US, there is no obligation for the legislators to have their votes recorded in most cases. Roll call votes are not mandatory in Congress; voice votes are the norm. A first step for justified coercion would be to require roll call votes except for unanimous consent.

I think the hidden assumption here is that the coercor is the individual voter, rather than the polity as a whole ala Hobbes. If one takes the latter view, then the requirement to persuade and/or publish one’s vote disappears.

Even if one believes that voters must persude others, there would then be a need to explain why voters cannot choose to use game-theory type tactics of misdirection in their persuasive efforts.

Cranky

One possible response to the formulation you give is, I guess, to define the problem out of existence. If A is justified in thinking that B is reasonably committed to P based on reason R1, then A must believe that R1 is a reasonable reason to support P. (Otherwise, A could not believe that B’s committment is reasonable.) In that case, on one notion of sincerity, A is being perfectly sincere when A gives R1 to B, because A is giving one of the reasons A thinks is reasonable.

To invalidate A’s conduct, one would have to come up with a justification for a requirement of sincerity that requires giving all of one’s reasons. Is there one? If the goal, stated broadly/loosely, is to respect the autonomy of the person entitled to claim reasons, how does a withholding of some reasons impair it?