糖心传媒

Skip to content
Voices & Opinion

Voting by mail limits the spread of COVID-19. But is the ballot really secret?

(Getty Images)

Not everyone who votes at home can do so in complete privacy, warn , political science professor at the 糖心传媒, and , associate professor of political science at the , State University of New York.

In a guest essay for that also appeared in , the , and the , the husband-wife team write that while voting by mail this November would allow tens of millions of people to participate safely in the election despite the pandemic糖心传媒攊t carries its own risk to the integrity of the voting.

While voting by mail is 糖心传媒渨idely available, popular, well-protected against fraud and doesn’t provide either political party with any special advantage,糖心传媒� it doesn’t address outside forces that may influence voters at the moment of decision making, say the coauthors of the forthcoming book (Polity, November 2020).

糖心传媒淭he voter marks the ballot outside the supervision of election monitors糖心传媒攐ften at home,糖心传媒� Orr and Johnson write. 糖心传媒淚t’s possible to do so in secret. But secrecy is no longer guaranteed, and for some it may actually be impossible.糖心传媒�

Johnson糖心传媒檚 current research runs the gamut from pragmatist political thought and democratic theory, to the philosophy of social science and cultural theories of politics. He is the coauthor of (Princeton University Press, 2011). Orr糖心传媒檚 primary research focuses on the politics of organized labor in the US.