Step 1: Participate in the political process, choose your future leaders, live out your democratic right as an American that countless men and women have literally died for. ADVERTISING Step 1: Participate in the political process, choose your future leaders,
Step 1: Participate in the political process, choose your future leaders, live out your democratic right as an American that countless men and women have literally died for.
Step 2: Selfie.
To many, there’s no better celebration of democracy than a voting booth photograph. It’s the moment political talk turns to political action, one younger voters are especially eager to record and share with friends.
But in several states, the right of free speech has clashed with the question of whether allowing photographs in the voting booth, a typically private space, could compromise elections. Some states, like Pennsylvania, have banned the practice. Last year, a federal court in New Hampshire overturned a ban on such photos, a decision still being appealed.
Snapchat, the social network of choice for many younger voters, joined the fray Friday, filing an amicus brief in New Hampshire arguing against the ban. It called ballot selfies “the latest way that voters, especially young voters, engage with the political process.”
Both supporters and detractors of the restrictions agree that there are significant freedoms at stake. They just disagree on which freedoms to focus on.
Q: Can I take a photo or not?
A: It depends on what state you live in.
There’s no federal law, and each state is different. The Huffington Post and the Digital Media Law Project have assembled state-by-state lists that you could check.
There’s quite a bit of variety in approaches. Some states, like South Carolina, have few restrictions, while others, like Pennsylvania and Vermont, allow for fines of up to $1,000.
Q: Why ban photos?
A: Those who want to keep cameras away from the voting booth say they are trying to preserve the secrecy of the ballot and stave off any attempts at buying votes.
“Going back a long time in history, there always have been attempts to take that secrecy away,” New Hampshire’s secretary of state, Bill Gardner, said in a telephone interview Monday.
If voters are free to take photos, outsiders could also compel voters to take photos, Gardner said. Corrupt forces that would seek to buy votes could demand evidence that the bought votes were actually cast. By not allowing voters to record that proof, he said, no one would be foolish enough to try to manipulate anyone else’s vote.
In the past, election fixers trying to eliminate voter privacy might have made people deposit their yes and no votes into different boxes, or link ballots to an identity. Modern voting setups had effectively prevented such behavior for many years, but the ability of smartphones to eliminate the privacy of the voting booth has created a new form of the old trick, Gardner said. And politicians and their supporters have never been shy about trying to find new ways to win elections.
“Whether an exchange of money, or for having to live with someone or some other fear, you don’t want anyone to go into that booth and end up voting for someone they didn’t really want to vote for, but felt they didn’t want to pay that price for whatever reason,” he said.
Q. Why should selfies remain free?
A: Those opposed to photography bans say concerns about vote-buying are overblown.
“There isn’t much evidence, if any at all, that this kind of activity is actually occurring,” said Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition. It was one of three organizations to file amicus briefs on Friday, along with Snapchat and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
No one wants to see vote-buying, but in combating that murky threat, officials have placed real restrictions on First Amendment rights, Silverman said. Millennials and other active social media users use photos as a fundamental part of how they communicate and ought to be able to express their excitement at participating in democracy, he said. Whether a selfie with a completed ballot or an artistic shot of the booth, an Instagram or Snapchat post can be as much a part of expressing civic pride as an “I Voted” sticker.
Silverman said the image of a goofy selfie with a ballot has obscured what he described as more serious benefits of allowing photography, like serving as an alert system for confusing ballots.
“More importantly, it’s about keeping the system honest, and documenting the election process and quickly identifying flaws that might be on the ballot and being able to share them quickly and easily with other voters,” he said.
Q: What is Snapchat’s argument?
A: In its court filing, Snapchat called ballot selfies and other photographs a key part of how the youngest generation of voters participates in the political process, and said they would be a key driver of more participation.
“It is precisely because a ballot selfie proves how a voter has exercised her franchise that it is an unmatched expression of civic engagement,” it said. “There is, simply put, no substitute for this speech.”
Snapchat also presented itself as a news-gathering operation, arguing that restricting its ability to gather user-generated content infringes on its watchdog function. Limiting those rights cannot be justified when the state could not point to specific instances of vote-buying, Snapchat argued.
“The flimsy speculation that the state has offered in support of its ballot-selfie ban cannot survive First Amendment scrutiny,” it wrote.
Snapchat said in a statement Monday: “Whether it’s a campaign button or a selfie from the ballot box, Snapchat believes that expressing participation in the democratic process is an important part of free speech and civic engagement that the First Amendment roundly protects.”
© 2016 The New York Times Company
