Those Pesky Hippies
The quote of the day goes to Jeff Woods, who is writing about Bernie Ellis, Mary Mancini, Tre Hargett and how the TBI basically went to some bloggers to investigate this comment.
I remember when I thought my vote counted. I’ve said it before, if I can get a receipt for a quarter pounder with cheese, why can’t I get one when I vote?
I think too much.
Anyway, Woods writes:
Here’s the moral of this little tale of power and corruption: Don’t mess with aging hippies. They’re meaner than you think.
Hargett sees them as a bunch of pansies. But the pansies kicked his ass on this legislation, so he was embarrassed and decided it was time for payback.
Heh.
Michael Silence also has a run down on how this story has evolved.
[...] Newscoma: I remember when I thought my vote counted. I’ve said it before, if I can get a receipt for a quarter pounder with cheese, why can’t I get one when I vote? [...]
Why can’t you get a printout of who you voted for? Simple: doing that makes vote buying / voter intimidation easy.
The whole point of the secret ballot was to destroy vote buying “machines”. It being pointless to bribe someone to vote for you, when you have no way of checking up on how they voted.
It’s one reason why easy access to absentee voting is a BAD idea.
Even more so, so that your boss can’t insist on seeing your receipt before deciding if you get to keep your job.
Or the county board can’t insist before deciding on your real estate tax protest.
Or the thugs from Acorn can’t insist before deciding to allow you to live, or die under their clubs (see Philly).
The secret ballot can only exist if nobody outside can know how you voted (and the Sequoya machines with a tracking roll could be reverse determined once they track which voters went to which machines as they already know voter order).