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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Election Is It Illegal to Put a Photo of Your Completed Ballot on the Internet?

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 9:30 AM

In states like New York and Florida, your Instagrammed photo of your vote for Barack Obama is illegal. In Washington it is not.

Gizmodo has a comprehensive list of states where it is and is not a misdemeanor to photograph a ballot.

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Comments (7) RSS

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If you are so self-centered that you feel the need to post a picture of your completed ballot on the internet I can see why your vote shouldn't be counted.

Posted by Last of the Time Lords on November 6, 2012 at 9:40 AM

Yeah, telling someone you support R-74 is fine. Posting a picture of your support for R-74 is just so fucking selfish. I mean, who the fuck do you think you are?

Posted by rejemy on November 6, 2012 at 9:58 AM

There is in fact a very good reason for this. If you were trying to pay or intimidate someone into voting a certain way, you could demand that they record how they voted and demand to see that record. By banning creating evidence of how you voted, you free the individual from the possibility of a trackable paper trail, making pay-for-vote impossible to verify.

Posted by SeattleEngineer on November 6, 2012 at 10:08 AM

What @3 said. I stood in line for 3.5 hours this morning in Brooklyn, and I sent an angry email to my representative on the city council. I even mentioned Washington's mail-in voting as a model to emulate. But I shudder to think how things would go in NYC if you could sell your vote so easily. Admittedly, any mail-in system is going to be subject to that kind of abuse, but at least you could make it harder by banning this kind of thing, which makes it trivially easy to sell your vote.

Posted by minderbender on November 6, 2012 at 10:55 AM

@3 for the win. It's important that people not be able to prove they voted a certain way, and although I think these criminal statutes are a bit heavy-handed, I'm at a loss for better ideas.

Posted by Eric Arrr on November 6, 2012 at 10:56 AM

Jerry Saltz did it on Facebook

Posted by HollyWG on November 6, 2012 at 12:10 PM

I don't think this would pass a legal challenge. If you're posting a photo of your own ballot to advocate for your beliefs, then this is an unconstitutional law impacting your freedom of speech. Now if the laws just banned photographing another person's ballot, that would be another matter.

Posted by long-time reader on November 6, 2012 at 2:02 PM