Is Uncle Sam Tracking Your Vote?

I didn't have much of a chance to watch television this evening.  Partly by choice, but partly because I had to go do my civic duty.  Yep, it's election day here in the United States.  Believe it or not, the polling place is where I found tonight's rant and it's one that should bother every American!

One of the cornerstones of the American society is the ability to influence the direction the country moves in. I will grant you that unless you are an elected official that influence is limited but is is much more then you would have in a dictatorship.  But a piece of that is that your vote is supposed to be completely anonymous.  The process of voting may vary from state to state as there isn't a law that standardizes the mechanism used, it just needs to be electronically counted.  Here in New York we use a system where you fill in bubbles on a sheet and put your ballot through a scanner.  So this is the process:

     1.  Get in the line for your district.

     2.  Sign your name next to your listing.

     3.  Get a ballot sheet and folder from the clerk.

     4.  Watch the other clerk write down the ballot number next to your name.

     5.  Wait for a shielded desk to be free.

     6.  Fill in the bubbles next to your choices.

     7.  Place the ballot in the folder and walk to the scanner.

     8.  Send the ballot through the scanner and wait for it to say it was successful.

     9.  Hand the empty folder to another clerk.

Take note of step number 3.  They actually write down the number on the ballot on a sheet of paper next to your name.  Once the ballots are scanned, they are stored in a locked box below the scanner.  Think this is new with the whole scanning piece?  You'd be wrong.  Before you would sign your name and get in a single file line for the old lever style booths.  Once my father in-law stepped out of line to talk to a friend he hadn't seen in a long time, he got the third degree from a clerk because he wasn't in the same order that the names were written in on their sheet.

Yep, they can track you.  I'm not saying that they ever did in the past, it would more then likely have been very difficult because of all the paper involved.  But now with all of the electronic calculating and whatnot I'm sure they are.  Think about this, when the scanner scans your selections it can also scan the ballot number and district information.  This means that right after your ballot is scanned they not only know who to add a vote to for each position but they can associate that with a ballot number.  That just means that someone would have to fill in a simple table in a database that contains two fields, ballot number and name.  After that it is just a simple process of linking that table to the scanned ballot table.  In a matter of hours you can see exactly who voted for who.

Makes me sick because I personally believe that this is happening.  Think about some of the news stories where the volunteers are going to specific houses in neighborhoods trying to sway their vote.  How do they know what houses to go to?  Or how about those annoying phone calls, how do they know what homes to call?  I think we have our answer!