Wisconsin Warns: If You Tweet Photos Of Your Completed Ballot, You Can Go To Jail
from the civic-pride-and-handcuffs dept
It's election day, of course, and with that comes some amount of civic pride among a number of voters. That's a good thing, for the most part, and in this era of social media and people sharing photos and videos about their lives, plenty of people are sharing imagery of their own ballot. Perfectly reasonable, right? Well, yes, except when that runs into laws designed to keep your ballots secret. There are, of course, good intentions behind such laws. But mixed in with all those local laws concerning camera usage inside a polling place are some that could cause trouble for people doing something quite ordinary. For example, it appears that people in Wisconsin who decide to Instagram/Tweet/Facebook an image of their ballots, have committed a class I felony, election fraud. And this doesn't appear to just be a law that the state is going to ignore either. It's been issuing warnings to people that they could face felony charges if they do post those photos. Undoubtedly, many will be unaware that they're committing election fraud when they thought they were just showing civic pride. One hopes that officials in Wisconsin, and other states, take the context into account before moving forward with any legal responses.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: civic pride, elections, felony, photographs, sharing, voting, wisconsin
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I suspect that will be largely influenced by the outcome.
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I had my ballot in my hands last week
Would it matter if I had filled it out or not?
Would Google be somehow at fault for this?
* yes really. And my ballot was turned in early.
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Re: I had my ballot in my hands last week
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Re: Re: I had my ballot in my hands last week
/s
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Election fraud?
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Re: Election fraud?
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> how you voted and providing evidence showing
> how you voted.
But the whole absentee process pretty much renders this law unenforceable anyway.
If someone's buying votes, they'll just get their customers to vote absentee, then show them the proof in the privacy of their homes and offices before they mail them in.
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Suppose I didn't photograph my ballot but merely told everyone that I voted for Mickey Mouse instead of Darth Vader? That would have about the same effect. Would it be illegal?
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You better vote for Darth Vader instead of Mickey Mouse or something bad might happen. (We might force you to use Apple Maps.)
I can see your point though. If anyone can take a photo, then it can be used to prove to the extortionist (or vote purchaser) how you voted. So just don't allow photos or any kind of proof of how you voted in order to protect the integrity of the system.
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So if that's the case, though it might seem a little overboard, I'd have to agree with the whole 'making it a felony' bit, as otherwise it would be far too simple for the powerful to game the system.
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But they could just watch the polling place.
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Court Cases
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Whether prohibiting photographs is really well-adapted to its purpose -- preventing vote-buying -- I'm not sure. The actual crime is vote-buying, not taking a photograph. It is difficult to think of taking a photograph as close enough to being wrong that it should be prohibited.
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Re: Re: Court Cases
Marlin v DC Board of Elections (DC Cir. 2001)
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> of these regulations to prevent him from
> wearing a political sticker when voting
> inside the polling place is an unjustified
> restriction of his right to free expression
> under the First Amendment
I wore my Cthulhu/Dagon 2012 (Why vote for a lesser evil?) t-shirt when I went and voted yesterday, and actually had a little old lady election worker start to turn me away because she said I couldn't have any political material inside the polling place. I tried to explain to her that it was a joke and that an eons-old leviathan from the deepest abyss was not actually a candidate for office in Tuesday's election. She said that was all well and good but "even if he isn't running this time, you can't wear his campaign shirt into the polls." It took me pulling out my iPhone and googling up a picture of Cthulhu before she clued in and let me through the doors.
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Vote Purchasing
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Things didn't go wrong, so...
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voting machines
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