The Death of the Secret Ballot - and the inevitable aftermath

The election is just a few days away, but already millions of Americans have voted. As the New York Times noted yesterday:

Among some of the 32 states that allow their residents to vote early without an excuse, either by mail or in person, the verdict is already in from a full quarter of registered voters — well into the millions...In 2004, 22 percent of voters cast an early presidential ballot, and the number is expected to climb to 30 percent to 35 percent this year.

Indeed, the Times is so pleased with this turn of events that it published an editorial yesterday urging that every state allow early voting. The advantages of early voting, says the editorial, are that (1) it makes voting more convenient, and (2) it

makes it harder for the forces of disenfranchisement to stop eligible voters from casting ballots. If election officials try to require voters to present ID when it is not required by law, early voting gives voters a chance to simply return the next day. Dirty tricks are also harder to pull off.

This makes good sense in states such as Illinois, where early voting involves actually showing up at a polling place and casting a vote in the traditional way, by secret ballot. The problem is that in 28 states early voting consists of "No-excuse absentee voting." Anybody in those states can declare that he or she would rather not vote in person, and is then free to vote by mail. (This is distinct from absentee voting that requires an excuse, such as a physical impairment that prevents someone from coming to the voting place.)

What this means is that the ballot in 28 states - most of America - is no longer secret. People are free to show one another their ballots when they are voting. Indeed, the Times describes a party in which Colorado voters went to someone's house and filled in their ballots together.

The problem with "no-excuse absentee voting" is that it can lead to dirty tricks. If somebody can see my ballot before I send it in, there is potential for me to sell my vote, or for somebody to intimidate me into voting for Candidate X. The secret ballot makes such abuse harder, because the person who wants to buy or coerce my vote cannot be sure what I did in the privacy of the voting booth. (For a history of the secret ballot, and how it swept through America after it was introduced from Australia, see this recent New Yorker article.)

Now, you might object that even in states with "no-excuse absentee voting" people still have the option of going to the polling place on election day to use a secret ballot. However, the simple availability of "no-excuse absentee voting" effectively kills the protection afforded by the secret ballot system. The employer who wants to bribe or coerce workers into voting for candidate X merely needs to tell the workers that they must vote by mail.

What this means is that the current presidential election falls short of international standards for free and fair elections. Even the United States government, in its advice to foreign countries, warns that a secret ballot is essential to free and fair elections:

° Secret ballots — voting by secret ballot ensures that an individual's choice of party or candidate cannot be used against him or her.

Too bad that we've lost sight of this in the U.S....

Now get ready for the lawsuits and acrimony. If you thought that the ruckus about Acorn's fraudulent voter registrations was bad, wait for the fuss that will come when the loser of a close election starts to point out that some of those mail-in votes were bought or coerced. (As some of them inevitably were.) Maybe this election won't be close enough for McCain to have a real incentive to make a big fuss along these lines, but sooner or later there will be a legal showdown about "no-excuse absentee voting." And given how predictable the problems are, there really is no excuse.

Paulson's conflict of interest

In a recent editorial in the Times, Paul Krugman details how Henry Paulson's treasury department has been very slow to buy equity stakes in financial firms. Why is the United States, where this whole crisis began, a Johnny-Come-Lately in adopting a sensible rescue plan? I fear Krugman may be too polite when he pins the blame mainly on laissez-faire ideology:

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Paulson’s initial response was distorted by ideology. Remember, he works for an administration whose philosophy of government can be summed up as “private good, public bad,” which must have made it hard to face up to the need for partial government ownership of the financial sector.

What about the strong financial incentives that Paulson, and his golden boy Neel Kashkari, have to favor banks and their executives over taxpayers? Both men were executives at Goldman until recently. It would be surprising if they did not see themselves returning to banking jobs after their stints in government service come to a close. How vigorously can we expect a man to work on behalf of the public interest when doing so could cost him dearly in terms of future compensation? Beyond the financial incentives, there's the matter of Paulson's longstanding friendships with his former peers on Wall Street. Seen in this light, Paulson's initial reluctance to have the government take equity stakes in Wall Street firms, and his continued foot-dragging on limits to executive pay, are no surprise.

This is not to impugn Paulson's character. The point is simply that he is confronted with a conflict of interest. The government required him to sell his Goldman stock when he became Treasury secretary, but that's hardly enough to avoid a conflict of interest. The problem is the classic revolving door in Washington, whereby executives from regulated industries are appointed to oversee those industries for a while, then return to lucrative positions in those same industries.

So here's a request to our future president (I'm hoping that's you, Barack)...please appoint someone from outside of the financial industry as our next Treasury Secretary. How about an academic? I hear there's a clever economist at Princeton, one Paul Krugman, who might fit the bill...