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The voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy
New democracies go to great lengths to implement institutional protections of the electoral process. However, in this paper we present evidence that shows that even in the United States—where the secret ballot has been in place for generations—doubts about the secrecy of the voting process are surpr...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6322754/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30615669 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209765 |
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author | Dowling, Conor M. Doherty, David Hill, Seth J. Gerber, Alan S. Huber, Gregory A. |
author_facet | Dowling, Conor M. Doherty, David Hill, Seth J. Gerber, Alan S. Huber, Gregory A. |
author_sort | Dowling, Conor M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | New democracies go to great lengths to implement institutional protections of the electoral process. However, in this paper we present evidence that shows that even in the United States—where the secret ballot has been in place for generations—doubts about the secrecy of the voting process are surprisingly prevalent. Many say that their cast ballot can be matched to their name or that others could observe their vote choices while they were voting. We find that people who have not previously voted are particularly likely to harbor doubts about the secrecy of voters’ ballots. Those who vote by mail in the privacy of their own homes also feel that others are able to discover their vote choices. Taken together, these findings suggest an important divergence between public perceptions about and the institutional status of the secret ballot in the United States, a divergence that may affect patterns of voting behavior and political participation. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6322754 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-63227542019-01-19 The voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy Dowling, Conor M. Doherty, David Hill, Seth J. Gerber, Alan S. Huber, Gregory A. PLoS One Research Article New democracies go to great lengths to implement institutional protections of the electoral process. However, in this paper we present evidence that shows that even in the United States—where the secret ballot has been in place for generations—doubts about the secrecy of the voting process are surprisingly prevalent. Many say that their cast ballot can be matched to their name or that others could observe their vote choices while they were voting. We find that people who have not previously voted are particularly likely to harbor doubts about the secrecy of voters’ ballots. Those who vote by mail in the privacy of their own homes also feel that others are able to discover their vote choices. Taken together, these findings suggest an important divergence between public perceptions about and the institutional status of the secret ballot in the United States, a divergence that may affect patterns of voting behavior and political participation. Public Library of Science 2019-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6322754/ /pubmed/30615669 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209765 Text en © 2019 Dowling et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Dowling, Conor M. Doherty, David Hill, Seth J. Gerber, Alan S. Huber, Gregory A. The voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy |
title | The voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy |
title_full | The voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy |
title_fullStr | The voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy |
title_full_unstemmed | The voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy |
title_short | The voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy |
title_sort | voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6322754/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30615669 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209765 |
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