Secret Ballots and Public Statements

One of the more interesting -- and valuable -- traditions in US democracy is the practice of the secret ballot. Now it is true that if you know me and read these words, you can probably guess with fair accuracy how I might vote on any given issue or candidate. Though I do hope to occasionally surprise people, it's probably still true if you read my posts without knowing me. So in that sense, one could argue that secret ballot is a fiction. If we pretty much know who will vote in what way, where's the point?

The conventional belief is that secret ballots prevent people from being coerced into voting a certain way. For instance, you could pay me to vote to support your cause, and I could take your money. Then I could vote against your cause anyway, and with a secret ballot you cannot know that. I don't want to argue that's unimportant or trivial -- it's not. But there's more.

When we try to change our habits and behaviors, one important tool we have is the strategy of precommitment. If I want to stop late-night snacking, it sure helps to leave the snacks at the corner store or lock the refrigerator after 9pm. I can still walk down to the store, or get the key and unlock the refrigerator, but I've put an impediment there.

We also use precommitment to condition our future behaviors in social and political ways. Declaring party allegiance disposes us to vote for or against issues that we truthfully are not especially interested in. Making public statements in support of a candidate or position might influence others, but it probably influences nobody more strongly than our future selves.

In this frame of reference, our social media posts are major foci of precommitment. And that is probably nowhere more true than in my posts this last month. We do face issues in this country. They are real and specific issues. But I chose to write about democracy, rationality, and compassion. Some of the specific problems facing our country make me raging, boiling-over, angry. And I am as susceptible to snap judgement as any other human being. You may know how I feel about every one of those hot-button issues. But here, by choosing what I say in a public forum, I am very much precommitting myself to put reason and sympathy first.