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Early voting is a new process, and the kinks haven’t been worked out. So here are some things you probably did not know if you cast your ballot early in Connecticut.
First, if you vote early, your ballot is not secret. Your name is written in large bold letters on the outside of the envelope and the poll workers who open the envelope get to see your name and your ballot—at least that's how things work in Greenwich. This is a serious oversight, especially if you’re a potential political target and you’re voting in a way that might be used against you by others.
Your name on the envelope that contains your ballot should not be easily read by poll workers. It’s not clear that the envelope needs to have your name on it at all, but certainly there could be a flap that covers the name and is not opened except in whatever instance you name is required to verify that you voted, which seems rare. Alternately, you could sign a separate piece of paper that gets filed and the envelope has no identifying information on it at all (though this would be less secure as such envelopes could “materialize”). A best alternative is that the envelope is coded with some number or bar code that is then scanned and associated with your vote only in a database that is relatively secure.
The absentee ballot process is a bit better in that the ballot is sealed in two envelopes. The outer envelope contains your name address and a bar code, and the ballot is in an inner envelope that contains only your signature. Ideally, the outer envelope is opened and your signature is verified against an image of your ID which is on file, and then the outer envelope is saved separately and inner envelope is placed in a pile to be processed on election day.
However, the people opening the inner envelope can still tell who you voted for if your signature is legible, but not otherwise. The question on the ballot this year is why allow no-excuse absentee voting when early voting is already available. The excuse of “early voting is less private” should not be a reason, that should be fixed regardless.
Whatever the solution, the current system exposes people’s votes, and lots of people are voting this way.
Voting on election day is most secure from the perspective of your identity, unless the poll monitor who is watching you place the form in the scanner knows you personally, and you place the form in the machine with the votes facing up so he can see. In any other circumstance, in person votes are completely private. From personal experience, a local poll monitor was discussing candidates with a previous voter, and when I walked up he looked at my ballot and said “oh good” when he saw my vote.
So, when you vote in person on election day, place the form in the machine face down – the machine will scan your vote either way, and if the machine fails, your vote will get hand counted, which is even better. If the monitor tells you to place the form in with the votes face up, you can tell him where to go.
If you feel disposed not to vote for RINOs who are hurting Republican and Conservative politics, or if you are voting for Trump, and you’re concerned that our 46th President called Trump supporters garbage, or you’re concerned that Democrats think of Trump supporters as Nazis (while supporting Hamas terrorists and implementing race-based policies), you might want to re-think your early vote and just vote on election day if you can (ballot face down), and by absentee ballot if you’re going to be absent.
