Preserve the Secret Ballot

When I was a kid and asked my dad who he voted for when Eisenhower was running for president, yes I can remember that far back, when the tvs were all tubes and the pictures all black and white, and the blood was especially dark, and the first images I can remember seeing were scenes from Korea with guys running and climbing in and out of trenches carrying M1s or whatever they carried in those days and it was kind of heroic at the same time it skewed my idea of history, but anyway, he said “That’s my business.”
And I kind of remember asking my mother at another time who she voted for in the election Nixon won and she kind of looked at me with that smug smile of hers where she never opened her mouth enough to see her teeth, where the line her lips made had the same degree of curve as a slice of watermelon, followed by a silence, as if she were saying the same thing as my dad, ‘That’s my business.”
So I learned about the secret ballot, and later in civics class, which we called social studies, it became evident that the secret ballot was something sacrosanct, like voting itself, and that it was as much a protection as any of the other rights Americans had, because somewhere sometime back down someone else’s memory lane, there was no such thing and the finger that went into the ink to show that someone had, indeed, voted, was the finger that got cut off when the winner and his posse went to work separating the wheat from the chaff, and hell, what difference did it make whether you voted or not, because the guy with the sharpest sword was the guy who was going to win. Guess it’s still that way in a lot of the world, just ask Robert Mugabe. Poor loser.
So, anyway, now it’s becoming increasingly clear that respect for the secret vote is rapidly eroding, chipped away day after day, month after month, election after election, by pollsters, the kind of insect that, when we find them in the timbers of our home, we exterminate with prejudice. What business is it of theirs who someone is planning to vote for? Similarly, it’s no business of theirs what lever you pulled, button you pushed or circle you filled in, when you’ve gotten 100 feet from the polling station after casting your ballot. There’s a reason there’s a curtain on the booth. There’s a reason software security is of the utmost import. There’s a reason we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to design, manufacture and distribute voting machines that are considered not only idiot proof (for the voters), but also secure, so our Republic, as it were, can’t be put upside down by the bad guys.We’re already stripped of virtually all our privacy. Cameras at intersections, extremely short-wave radiation imaging that sees through clothing at airports and other secure locations, cops in schools, devices that can hear through windows and walls, cable tv ads inviting viewer participation…. How much is giving up one more right going to hurt? It’s kind of like global warming: you’ll know it when you see, but then it’ll be too late.
So, the next time someone asks you who you’re going to vote for, or after the fact for one of those euphonious exit polls news shows like to flout, tell ‘em, “That’s my business,” and let’s leave it at that.