Against the Secret Ballot

The secret ballot is often seen as a centrepiece of democratic elections, helping guarantee they are free, fair and that votes reflect citizens’ genuine preferences. However, J. S. Mill and a few contemporary writers have argued that open voting could augment public deliberation. Against it, are considerations of corruption, civic shame (at inability to defend one’s voting choice) and democratic distortion (voting in socially acceptable ways). Bypassing the aspirations of public deliberation, I argue that voters’ knowledge of each other’s electoral preferences is an integral part of the democratic ideal. Building on the assumption that coercive power of democratic states is authorised by the people and exercised in their name, I claim is that a necessary condition of the justifiability of coercive power is that it’s addressed to those subject to it: the coerced can then in principle address their coercers back. With open voting, voters know in principle how each of them proposed to shape the law to which all are subject: they enjoy mutual minimal answerability. While avoiding corruption, civic shame and democratic distortions favour retaining the secret ballot for the time being, I conclude that the objectionable features of actually existing democracies do not detract from the cogency of open voting as a constituent of the democratic ideal.