[EL] Secret signatures and secret ballots

[Doug Hess]

 I'll take a shot at this question...sorry if I missed similar responses in
the digest.

Votes and signatures function differently in at least two important ways,
the first is a matter of the effectiveness of a political act; the second, a
matter of rhetoric (in the older sense of the word, as in "giving reasons"):


1) Effectiveness of the Act
1a) The number of signatures needed for a petition to succeed simply needs
to surpass some threshold (the required number to pass and the extras needed
to ensure sufficiency) that may not be easy to collect, but is at least
known (i.e., an extremely fearful supporter could do something else for the
campaign instead of signing the petition and know the purpose of signing had
been achieved once the threshold was met).
1b) The number of votes, and your vote, has to pass some (generally) unknown
number of votes that your opponent is getting. More importantly, perhaps,
given that most elections are settled by a large margin, your vote is
expressive and all that. Even if you know your candidate will win, I think
voters like the idea of being recorded, etc.

2) Rhetoric of Action (i.e., giving reasons for your action)
2a) Signing a petition does help it, but the action could be justified as
just "putting it on the ballot"; this argument actually works, in my
experience, when asking people to sign a petition for candidates they don't
like (don't forget, candidate petitions are public) or for an initiative
they don't agree with.
2b) Voting, on the other hand, is a much more definitive act of support.

If both of your neighbors are running for Mayor, you might sign a petition
for both even though you don't care for one. You can justify this and even
denounce one if you want to. However, if they get to know that you voted
against one of them, and this bothers you or is threatening in some way, you
might stay out of the election entirely.

As an aside:

Do members of congress have to collect signatures each time they run? Or
does that vary by state? Or only if you're a non-incumbent? I ask because I
strongly suspect that politicians complaining about "voter registration
fraud" likely have handed in petition forms that had far more bad signatures
and errors than voter registration applications by citizen drives. I recall,
this was awhile back, that the rule of thumb was that candidates and
initiatives need to gather something like 20 to 25 percent more signatures
on their petitions than needed to ensure that they had a sufficient number.

-Doug

From: "Volokh, Eugene" <VOLOKH at law.ucla.edu>
To: "law-election at uci.edu" <law-election at uci.edu>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:20:27 -0700
Subject: [EL] Secret signatures and secret ballots

                I thought I’d pose two questions to the list ; the questions
are related, but I hope people might consider them.

                1.  Say that we’re deciding whether to adopt the secret
ballot, and there are two options on the table: (a) the secret ballot, and
(b) a regime in which people’s votes are recorded, but employers and other
institutions are barred from discriminating based on a person’s vote.  Which
do we think might be superior, considering both
(i) the possibility that the antidiscrimination regime won’t be easily
enforceable and thus might not give much assurance to voters that they need
not fear discrimination, and
(ii) the interest of some employers, contracting parties, and others in, for
instance, not employing someone who is known to them and to their customers
as a supporter of some hypothetical KKK Party, or of a militantly
anti-American party (whether Communist or otherwise), or a ballot measure
whose content undermines confidence in the employee’s commitment to his job?

2.  Assuming that your answer to the first question is (a), because the
secret ballot gives voters more confidence that their vote won’t be held
against them, while at the same time diminishing the burden on employers,
why exactly should the answer be different as a policy matter for signing an
initiative petition as opposed to voting on the petition?  Both involve
voters exercising their lawmaking power, and not just speaking.  Both
involve each voter having only a very minor effect on the election (unlike
legislators, whose impact on a result is likely to be much greater).  Both
involve voters being potentially deterred from expressing their true views
by fear of retaliation.  To the extent one thinks that some retaliation,
such as remonstrances or even boycotts, is valuable, both involve that
equally as well.  Why should we treat one form of voter participation in the
lawmaking process differently from the other?

                Eugene
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