You Can't Shame Me Into Voting

“Who you vote for is your secret, but whether you vote is public record.” This was the creepy message on the postcard we received just days before Tuesday’s election from the illiberal authoritarians who call themselves America Votes. Similar cards, as press reports have noted, were sent to voters in lots of battleground states, and included, as ours did, a printout of the recipient's voting record in recent years -- that is, whether we’d voted or not -- and a comparison with “neighborhood” voting patterns. The project has a Saddam-esque feel to it, and serves as a reminder about how poorly the right to vote is understood, and how fragile are the norms that protect it.

An editorial in the Hartford Courant called the America Votes report cards “an abuse of power,” adding that “voters might well assume they are under Orwellian surveillance.” If this keeps up, the editorial contends, some residents might decide not to vote rather than to put up with this intrusion. There might also be pressure, the Courant said, to make the lists of who voted and who didn’t confidential, which actually strikes me as a pretty good idea.