Can my husband find out who I am voting for in the Presidential Election?"

Olivia Dreizen Howell, the founder of a website to help women get back on their feet after a breakup or divorce, tweeted last week, “We’ve been getting this question a lot,” so she followed up with some facts. As the Washington Post confirmed with experts, the answer is simple: “No; it will be public record that you voted, but not how you filled out your ballot.”

The GOP ticket is led by a sexual predator who a jury found “‘raped’ [journalist E. Jean Carroll] as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” the judge in the case wrote. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has called for a national abortion ban, wrote the forward to a book that denounced contraception for making pregnancy “seem like an optional and not natural result of having sex,” and repeatedly called women who haven’t given birth “sociopathic” and “childless cat ladies.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic ticket is led by a woman who chose “Freedom” by Beyoncé as her campaign song, and has dispensed with the mealy-mouthed language about abortion rights to declare she stands for “the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body.” Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, her running mate, has decried “weird” MAGA Republicans of the “he-man woman haters’ club.”

    • @MajinBlayze
      13•4 months ago

      Just going to preface this by saying that I absolutely do support vote by mail, it’s objectively a good thing

      However, there’s a problem that should be considered in that it can create opportunities for coerced voting either within a household, or by requiring someone to send a photo of their form.

      The former being more of a problem than the later

        • @MajinBlayze
          1•4 months ago

          Can’t have salads because they could be used for voter coercion?

        • @MajinBlayze
          6•4 months ago

          does that mean we shouldn’t have phones or that tracking apps should be restricted?

          It is not my intent to equate “x has problem y” with “x should not exist” very good systems can and do get abused and misused.

          There’s a reason I started my comment with

          Mail-in voting is objectively a good thing

          All I’m saying is that maybe there should be a way for people to go back and override their votes (which admittedly could probably also be abused in some situations), or better yet, just better social safety nets to help people get out of those situations. I’m not suggesting I have all of the answers, just acknowledging that the person at the top of the thread raises a valid, if possibly overstated, concern.

    • @solrize
      -1•4 months ago

      Because your abusive spouse/preacher/etc. can make you show your ballot, or even mark it for you.

        • @solrize
          -3•4 months ago

          a) some states are pure vote by mail. b) if you have the option of voting at home, that exact same abuser can make you exercise it.

          I used to oppose VBM because of this. Now I see it as a trade off since there are also benefits that can outweigh the problems. But a person with their eyes open should not pretend that the problems don’t exist.

          • @[email protected]English
            12•4 months ago

            Which states? I am not aware of any that are solely vote by mail.

            If you wanted to, it would be easy to screw up your ballot request. Throw it out when you get it, mess up the form, forget to sign, offer to take it to the post office and never mail it… Then it’s “oh no it never came, let’s just go vote in person”.

              • @MajinBlayze
                5•4 months ago

                From the article you linked

                As of 2022, California mails every registered voter a ballot before the elections, but there is still the option to vote in-person

                • @solrize
                  -2•4 months ago

                  Yes, that is California. In the exact same paragraph, other states are listed which don’t offer the option. Oregon was the one that came to my mind immediately.

                  The issue is, having an option to do something the right way is not all that helpful. If there is an option to do it the wrong way, attackers (using “attacker” in the sense of computer security) will do what they can to make you use that option, so they can exploit it. Therefore, security systems should make doing the wrong thing impossible, rather than merely making the right thing possible.

                  • @MajinBlayze
                    2•4 months ago

                    You’re correct, I should have been more thorough.

                    Here’s one of the sources cited by that Wikipedia article:

                    Mostly-Mail Elections (aka Vote-by-Mail, All-Mail or Vote-at-Home Elections) What Are Mostly-Mail Elections? In mostly-mail elections, all registered voters are sent a ballot through the mail. The voter marks the ballot, puts it in a secrecy sleeve or envelope if required, places it in a separate mailing envelope, signs an affidavit on the exterior of the mailing envelope or otherwise provides verification of their identify and then returns the ballot via mail or by dropping it off at an approved return location.

                    Ballots are mailed out well ahead of Election Day, and thus voters have an “election period,” not just a single day, to vote. Mostly-mail elections can be thought of as absentee voting for everyone. This system is also referred to as “vote-by-mail” or all-mail ballot elections. While “mostly-mail elections” means that every registered voter receives a ballot by mail, this does not preclude in-person voting opportunities on or before Election Day. For example, even though all registered voters in Colorado are mailed a ballot, voters can choose instead to cast a ballot at an in-person vote center during the early voting period or on Election Day.

                    According to this, “All mail elections” are not different from “mostly mail” elections, and doesn’t preclude the use of in person voting.

                    Also

                    systems should make doing the wrong thing impossible

                    Please no, imo that’s an incredibly fucked line of reasoning