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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Should Secret Voting Be Mandatory?

Should Secret Voting Be Mandatory?

Johnson, James
Orr, Susan

Hardcover

Series: Political Theory Today

PhilosophyGeneral Political Science

ISBN10: 1509538151
ISBN13: 9781509538157
Publisher: Polity Pr
Published: Feb 16 2021
Pages: 140
Weight: 0.59
Height: 0.38 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
The secrecy of the ballot, a crucial basic element of representative democracy, is under threat. Attempts to make voting more convenient in the face of declining turnout - and the rise of the ballot selfie - are making it harder to guarantee secrecy.

Leading scholars James Johnson and Susan Orr go back to basics to analyze the fundamental issues surrounding the secret ballot, showing how secrecy works to protect voters from coercion and bribery. They argue, however, that this protection was always incomplete: faced with effective ballot secrecy, powerful actors turned to manipulating turnout - buying presence or absence at the polls - to obtain their electoral goals. The authors proceed to show how making both voting and voting in secret mandatory would foreclose both undue influence and turnout manipulation. This would enhance freedom for voters by liberating them from coercion or bribery in their choice of both whether and how to vote.

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