Susan Hogarth, a Libertarian Party nominee for North Carolina legislature in 2024, has a federal lawsuit pending against the state’s ban on a voter taking a picture of his or her voted ballot. Hogarth v Bell, e.d., 5:24cv-481. See this article about the case, which will probably be decided soon. The Judge is Louise Wood Flanagan, a Bush Jr. appointee.
What a waste of time. Typical of nutjob Hogarth.
IMO, that’s a First Amendment, political speech right.
NC- security pic of ballot to see if it is counted – via *unique* votes
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https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-lower-voting-age-16-landmark-electoral-reform-2025-07-17/
UK vote at age 16 >>> more / less statism ???
Being allowed to take photos of a voted ballot would effectively get rid of ballot secrecy, since if anyone bribed anyone else to vote or not vote a certain way they could require such photos as proof that the bribe is effective, and if anyone with leverage (employer, family, neighbors, etc) wanted to threaten people for voting or not voting a certain way they could require such photos (or else).
On the other hand, laws against taking such photos aren’t very effective, given that they are extremely difficult to enforce effectively as a practical matter, and especially since many people now use absentee or mail ballots of some sort, so even confiscating everyone’s phones while they vote in person wouldn’t come close to really stopping this practice.
Furthermore, even without photos, it’s impossible to effectively police against other people in some cases seeing – and thus having potential leverage – over absentee and mail ballots, particularly when people don’t live alone among other things
We need to accept that secret ballots are no longer effective at preventing leverage over how people vote given both the ubiquity of cell phones with cameras and the large and growing percentage of votes that are not cast in person at polling places.
And furthermore that this is a good thing, because voting is itself political power and any level of political power without accountability is bad.
Despite exaggerated fears, the consequences of voting the wrong way are fairly minor – at most, the loss or degradation of some social relationships (romantic, friendship, financial, employer / employees, customers / clients etc). Anything more extreme is both extremely rare and already illegal for other reasons, as well as not particularly difficult to prove or prosecute. Since many people already publicly discuss how they vote or plan to vote, photo proof or lack thereof isn’t in any way likely to set off some epidemic of political violence that sick and demented people fantasize about.
On the other hand, some level of accountability by way of nonviolent social sanctions may lead more people to vote more responsibly when it comes to choosing politicians (and on initiatives in the states and localities that have those), just as on the record voting tends to make politicians vote more responsibly in turn.
Of course lowering the voting leads to more statism. It should be raised, not lowered. An even better measure of who should and shouldn’t be allowed to vote are things like property ownership requirements, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, past national service requirements, long term stable residency requirements, etc – measures of community stake ownership.
None of these are mutually exclusive. Having multiple filters to narrow down who is allowed to vote in place would be one of the best and most effective things we could do to put out of control big government expansion and overreach back in check.
There is no need for pictures of ballots to ensure votes are counted correctly with standing count. Everyone in the room can see the count concurrently, and everyone can check back later to see if any mistakes are made regardless of whether they were there or not if it’s recorded on video.
Yes, it gets rid of secret ballots, which is a good thing, for multiple reasons.
It’s interesting to note that, while the US Constitution mentions the right to vote in a number of places, I don’t believe that there is any place in it where voting is required to be secret.
There was never any such constitutional requirement and still is none. Voice vote, which was obviously not secret, was common throughout American history. It was the voting system in South Carolina until 1950, and in Georgia as recently as 1925. States should bring it back, pending standing count.
Research the NH Ballot Selfie Law and Court case
I support Donald Trump and his White Power posse!