Florida Posts Early Voters' Names, Parties Online

[Bob Juch]

Who you vote for is your business, but voters casting their ballots during Florida's early voting may be surprised to learn that when and where they voted and their party affiliation is not only public record, but accessible to everyone over the Internet.

Every day of the early voting process, state elections officials post the names of everyone who has voted on the Florida Secretary of State, Division of Elections' Web site.

http://www.news4jax.com/politics/17781992/detail.html

[BackInTex]

I see pluses and minuses on this. I'm not sure if I like it, or don't.

[SportsFan68]

Here's one plus: Increased voter turnout.

Shankar Vedantam in Washington
October 28, 2008

AFTER nearly two years of political jockeying for the presidency, hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising and wall-to-wall campaign coverage in the media, nearly half of all Americans eligible to cast ballots in the presidential election may not bother to vote. Turnout for primaries, as well as local and municipal elections, often runs well below 50 per cent.

Several efforts have been made in recent years to boost voter turnout in the US, which is among the lowest in the democratic world. Campaigns run extensive registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts aimed at supporters, and authorities have eased access to polling places and offered more flexible voting rules.

Three political scientists, however, recently discovered an extraordinarily effective way to get people to vote.

Alan Gerber, Donald Green and Christopher Larimer drew up a list of more than 180,000 voters in Michigan. One group of 99,999 voters was set aside as a control group - these people just voted as they usually do. The rest were divided into four groups.

Members of one group each received a letter 11 days before a 2006 election exhorting them to vote because it was a civic duty. Members of another received a letter saying the researchers were looking at their voting habits. "You are being studied," it said.

The third group got a letter pointing out that whether someone votes is a matter of public record - registrars maintain publicly available lists of those who show up at the polls. (Whom they vote for is a secret.) The letter went on to note whether people in the recipient's household had voted in the 2004 presidential primary and general election.

The fourth group got a letter showing not only whether they had voted in the 2004 elections but also which of their neighbours had voted. It said that after the coming election, the entire neighbourhood would receive another mailing that laid out - household by household - who had voted.

"These were the most homely pieces of direct mail in the history of direct mail," Professor Green said. "They were sheets of computer paper … They are the exact opposite of the slick four-colour mailings that campaigns send out."

Homely though they were, the letters had a powerful effect. The control group's turnout rate was slightly less than 30 per cent. Among those who received the "civic pride" letter, turnout was 6 per cent higher than the control group's. Among those who were told they were being studied, it was 12 per cent higher. Among those who were shown whether they had voted in the previous election, the turnout was 16 per cent higher.

And telling people what all their neighbours had done the previous election day, and letting them know they would be similarly informed this time around, boosted turnout by 27 per cent.

The effectiveness of snitching on neighbors exceeded that of live telephone calls and rivaled that of laborious, face-to-face canvassing, the political scientists wrote in an article published in the American Political Science Review this year. Direct mail costs peanuts compared with other techniques.

The Michigan experiment was conducted before a primary, but this team and other researchers have demonstrated the same effect in other local and municipal elections and the 2008 Iowa presidential caucuses. Automated calls ahead of the 2008 Michigan primary informing people about their neighbors' voting history had the same effect.

"Many people are puzzled that we know whether they voted -- they don't know voting is a matter of public record," Green said.

Although people were generally not annoyed at being shown their voting history, they were occasionally annoyed at having it revealed to their neighbors.

Gerber, who also works at Yale, said campaigns would have to use the technique with caution, because the last thing a candidate wants to do is annoy people who are going to vote for him or her. But Green said nonpartisan groups, even public authorities, might consider using the technique to boost turnout, especially in municipal elections that often bring out just 15 percent of eligible voters.

The researchers said they did not set out to get their technique used in campaigns. Rather, they were trying to understand why turnout in American elections is so low -- when it once used to be very high. (There is also, paradoxically, the opposite mystery: Some political scientists have asked why turnout is as high as it is, given that individual voters have such little effect on the outcome of the election.)

In the 1880s, Green said, turnout used to touch 80 percent. By the 1920s, it was down to 40 percent. The reason, he said, was a number of well-meaning electoral reforms.

Elections in the mid-19th century were festive affairs, and people gathered to carouse, jostle one another and vote. They sometimes cast their ballots on a stage to cheers and jeers. Voting, even their choice of candidates, used to be extremely public.

A series of progressive reforms in the late 19th century turned voting into a private affair. Campaign operatives were kept clear of polling stations. People got to vote in secret, and few knew whether their neighbors voted.

Turnout plummeted.

What this suggests is that, besides civic pride and political conviction, a central reason people vote is that democratic participation is an intensely social act. Politics, candidates and campaigns offer us zones of connection with other citizens -- even our political opponents. It gives millions of people common topics of conversation.

Voting used to be that way, too. We certainly don't want to go back to the time when casting ballots involved fistfights and booze, but the Michigan experiment suggests one way we can revive some of the social aspects of voting.

Your vote may count for very little in the outcome of an election, but it may count for a lot in the eyes of your friends and neighbors.

[Timsterino]

Wow! How about that, here we are:

EVtrs DAD 9250 11/04/2008 2008 General Election 109399115 Sternberg, Erika 103 DEM Aventura Gov't Center 10/20/2008

EVtrs DAD 9250 11/04/2008 2008 General Election 109399114 Sternberg, Timothy W 103 DEM Aventura Gov't Center 10/20/2008

I do not have an issue with this as long as "who" I voted for is not public record. Although, who I voted for would not be a surprise to anyone in this forum.

[Ritterskoop]

I am looking to see if my early voting shows up.

Haven't found that yet, but I love this: a ton of people here are registered.

The 2006 population was 8.8 million. Let's make that 9.2 to allow for a lot of people still coming to Charlotte, which could be a bit more than 9.2 but I dunno.

As of right this second, 2.8 million are registered Democratic, 2 million Republican, 3,247 Libertarian, and 1.4 million unaffiliated. 6.2 million people are registered, which is awesome. Some are students from out of state, and we have some military bases, but those folks basically live here, so it's still a lot of people registered.

[Jeemie]

Who you vote for is your business, but voters casting their ballots during Florida's early voting may be surprised to learn that when and where they voted and their party affiliation is not only public record, but accessible to everyone over the Internet.

Every day of the early voting process, state elections officials post the names of everyone who has voted on the Florida Secretary of State, Division of Elections' Web site.

http://www.news4jax.com/politics/17781992/detail.html

I don't like this at all.

One law I would like to see passed is- if you're going to have early voting, there should be NO information released of ANY kind until after all the polls close on Election Day.

No exit polls, no party affiliation- as a matter of fact- there should be a news blackout.

As a matter of fact, I think news orgs should be banned from going on the air until the polls close in Alaska and Hawaii.

Not that this will ever happen, of course, because there's too much money involved.

But it's a well-known fact that releasing information like this affects voting behaviors.

[Jeemie]

Wow! How about that, here we are:

EVtrs DAD 9250 11/04/2008 2008 General Election 109399115 Sternberg, Erika 103 DEM Aventura Gov't Center 10/20/2008

EVtrs DAD 9250 11/04/2008 2008 General Election 109399114 Sternberg, Timothy W 103 DEM Aventura Gov't Center 10/20/2008

I do not have an issue with this as long as "who" I voted for is not public record. Although, who I voted for would not be a surprise to anyone in this forum.

For the first hundred years or so, there wasn't a secret ballot in the United States. Everyone saw how you voted. This practice continued in most states until the 1880s-1890s.

Kentucky was the last state to adopt a secret ballot, doing so in 1891.

[nitrah55]

Who you vote for is your business, but voters casting their ballots during Florida's early voting may be surprised to learn that when and where they voted and their party affiliation is not only public record, but accessible to everyone over the Internet.

Every day of the early voting process, state elections officials post the names of everyone who has voted on the Florida Secretary of State, Division of Elections' Web site.

http://www.news4jax.com/politics/17781992/detail.html

I don't like this at all.

One law I would like to see passed is- if you're going to have early voting, there should be NO information released of ANY kind until after all the polls close on Election Day.

No exit polls, no party affiliation- as a matter of fact- there should be a news blackout.

As a matter of fact, I think news orgs should be banned from going on the air until the polls close in Alaska and Hawaii.

Not that this will ever happen, of course, because there's too much money involved.

But it's a well-known fact that releasing information like this affects voting behaviors.

Here's what they should do:

Early voting everywhere.

Final election day is a Sunday, with polls open twelve hours a day the preceding Saturday (so no one has to vote on their Sabbath).

Polls close simultaneously 9PMET/8PMCT/7PMMT/6PMPT/5PMAKT that Sunday night.

Should they? Yes. Could they? No time soon.

[earendel]

Wow! How about that, here we are:

EVtrs DAD 9250 11/04/2008 2008 General Election 109399115 Sternberg, Erika 103 DEM Aventura Gov't Center 10/20/2008

EVtrs DAD 9250 11/04/2008 2008 General Election 109399114 Sternberg, Timothy W 103 DEM Aventura Gov't Center 10/20/2008

I do not have an issue with this as long as "who" I voted for is not public record. Although, who I voted for would not be a surprise to anyone in this forum.

For the first hundred years or so, there wasn't a secret ballot in the United States. Everyone saw how you voted. This practice continued in most states until the 1880s-1890s.

Kentucky was the last state to adopt a secret ballot, doing so in 1891.

Kentucky also has one of the most restrictive requirements for early voting, which is why there won't be very much, and there will be (if the Sec'y of State is to be believed) long lines. Of course Kentucky is a reliably red state so it won't make any difference on the national level, but long lines could affect local races including the race for the U.S. Senate seat.