The Power of the Secret Ballot

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist 

When people go to the polls to vote, they don't stand out in the parking lot and announce their position on every candidate and every issue - for all of their neighbors to see and comment upon.  No, they step into a booth, of sorts, and mark their ballot so that others cannot observe how they voted - and then they slip that ballot into a box or a machine to be counted by people who will no idea who cast each ballot.

Generally voting in America is a secret exercise and it is done that way intentionally.   Being able to cast a vote in secret allows people the ultimate freedom to vote the way they want, without interference from a controlling spouse, a party committee, or an angry mob.

This evening an Article of Impeachment regarding Donald John Trump will be delivered from the House of Representatives to the Senate where it will be read into the record.  The Article will accuse the former President of inciting a mob to attack the US Capitol.  Tomorrow the one hundred members of the Senate will be sworn in as jurors for the upcoming trial that results from the House's impeachment of Trump.  An actual trial will begin in the Senate in two weeks, a constitutionally-mandated event that will require all one hundred senators to be seated at their desks as the House and the former US President present their respective cases.   When the trial has run its course, the senators will vote on whether to convict the former President of the charge brought by the House.  A conviction will require that two-thirds of the Senators agree with the allegations - or 67 senators voting to convict.

Two-thirds is a high bar in just about any set of circumstances, but with the Senate being evenly divided with fifty members caucusing as Democrats and fifty as Republicans, it is extremely unlikely that two-thirds would vote for a conviction.  That possibility is made even more remote when the senators must cast their votes publicly - with the whole world watching - the equivalent of regular voters standing in the parking lots of their voting places and publicly announcing their votes on each candidate and each issue.

If we want to know how our senators truly feel on something as important as a charge that the President of the United States helped to foment an insurrection against the government he was elected to lead, serve, and protect, then forcing them to announce their votes in public is a poor way to do it.  Senators are subject not only to pressures from their constituents back home, but also to the pressures exerted by a multitude of party bosses, both in the Senate and back home, cable news pundits and other journalists, social media influencers, campaign donors, irate friends and relatives, and even random armed lunatics.

If the members of the United States Senate would allow themselves the freedom to determine the guilt or innocence of Donald Trump by a secret ballot, they would forgo an immense amount of needless aggravation and possibly even personal danger - and, in the process, America would learn how the senators truly felt about the matter on which they were voting.

Secret ballots are far more likely to yield honest results than public votes - and honesty is what we are after, isn't it?