Abstract
The secret ballot is considered a central feature of free and fair elections all over the world. While the reasons to uphold it seem to be overwhelming, we argue that the secret ballot is only second-best at best and that a modified version of open voting might prove to be more democratic. Instead of denying the various problems and difficulties that an open system might encounter, we want to offer a genuine proposal that can avoid these numerous pitfalls. After rehearsing the various arguments pro and contra open voting, we draw attention to the role of shame, which has been neglected by both sides in the debate. While shame plays a pivotal role in the democratic argument pro open voting, it also brings out new problems that tell against opening up the vote. This means that, if we want to draw on the democratic potential of open voting, we will have to find a system that minimizes the undesirable effects of shame. In the third and final section, we will formulate a concrete proposal of open voting that we believe is more democratic than the current secret ballot and is able to avoid potential worries. Even if this proves to be highly speculative, it serves as an invitation for further empirical research.
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Notes
As Przeworski (1998, p. 140) rightly points out, deliberation can only be called democratic if a ‘discussion intended to change the preferences on the bases of which people decide how to act (…) leads to a decision binding on a community’. If deliberation has no consequences for the public, then it is mere cheap talk or window-dressing.
This is aptly explained in a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin: ‘democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch’.
While reinvigorating the public sphere was deliberative democracy’s initial concern, it is nowadays primarily studied and implemented on a much smaller scale, that is, in so-called mini-publics (Niemeyer, 2011, p. 103). We think that doing away with the complete secrecy of the ballot – which was partly responsible for the corruption of the public sphere – fits with deliberative democracy’s initial program and tallies perfectly well with other recent attempts to stimulate deliberation on a larger scale (such as Niemeyer’s own focus on how to communicate the outcomes of mini-publics to the broader public).
‘In such a case as that of the repudiating states of North America, is there not some check to the unprincipled voter in the shame of looking an honest man in the face?’ (Mill (1862[1991], p. 219)
In Sweden, voters can get their ballot papers (with the party name printed on it) from party workers at the polling station. This is close to Brennan and Pettit’s proposal. The most important difference, however, is that Swedish voters retain the opportunity to keep their votes secret by picking up blank ballot papers (Valmyndigheten, s.d., p. 9). As we discuss in what follows, we believe – contra the Swedish system – that nobody should escape (potential) ‘exposure’, and yet – contra Brennan and Pettit – that voters should not be exposed to their peers but to fellow citizens.
Here, we do not discuss how these groups should be selected and organized, how all this should be funded or what the ‘penalty’ should be for not participating. With respect to the first question, we think that recent work by deliberative democrats on various forms of mini-publics can be highly useful (Goodin and Dryzek, 2006). In short, it is essential for such groups to have a trained and neutral moderator that guarantees the deliberative nature of the discussions. In addition, people’s votes should be revealed only within the seclusion of these groups.
The so-called ‘social desirability bias’ refers to the widely documented tendency of respondents to behave in ways that they think will be viewed favorably by the people observing them. If people think the expression of their opinion is public, they can feel under pressure to provide an answer that is deemed more publicly acceptable. As the so-called ‘Bradley-effect’ shows, this mechanism can have an impact in politics with fewer people expressing racist preferences in polls than in elections.
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Engelen, B., Nys, T. Against the secret ballot: Toward a new proposal for open voting. Acta Polit 48, 490–507 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2013.10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2013.10