Electionistic Strategery

Ballots Not So Secret in Ohio’s 2006 Elections

By Rosevelt Franklin ⋅ January 30, 2008 ⋅ Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

The secret ballot has long been a pretty important part of functioning democracy. It seems that if people are able to find out how you voted, they could coerce you to do it differently than you might be inclined to otherwise do. I know if someone with a recently-broken nose and a large, slightly-bent segment of iron pipe asked me to vote for Ken McGillicuddy for city council, I would at least be amenable to the idea of reading through Mr. McGillicuddy’s brochures.

If the same guy implied that my not voting for Mr. McGillicuddy would result in a modest to generous amount of blunt force trauma, I would most assuredly vote McGillicuddy.

Until recently I would have wondered how the thuggish enforcer-type with the bad acne scars and mirrored wrap-arounds would find out how I voted. It is supposed to be a secret.

Now, however, I don’t wonder any more.

A couple of activists in Ohio managed to use publicly available data and timestamps produced by iVotronic machines, manufactured by Election Systems and Software (or ES&S) to reconstruct 2006’s election results. Their system matched names on voter logs with the timecoded results from ES&S’s machines with alarming accuracy. This allowed them to determine, within statistically viable margins of error, which voter voted for which candidate or issue.

In sum, they figured out how people voted.

The iVotronic machine that ES&S produces is used in about 38 states.

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Not So Secret Ballots in Ohio