#261: Secrecy: Why The Senate, Now
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Societies in which voting is less than purely private are susceptible to the politics of strong-arm tactics. The individual amassing the most power in such societies keeps weaker individuals in line with subtle 'enforcement' ("You're still part of our team, aren't you?"), threats ("Vote for me or you'll be sorry"), and violence (unrelated attacks on a voter's personal interests, family members, etc.)
The beauty of the secret ballot is that the strong-arm enforcer is out of luck. This is the foundation for equality in the modern world--we each have an inviolate strength, the right to vote in secrecy.
Under a representative democracy, however, there's an opposite need for transparency, because voters need to know that their will is being expressed accurately.
Voting in a representative democracy is thus best a mix of secrecy and transparency. Which is what our founding fathers created: a House of Representatives to convey the raw desires of the electorate, and a Senate, to cool any hot-headed impulse.
Which brings us to the weakest link in the US system's mix of transparency and secrecy: the Senate's loss of mystique: its become yet another transparent political body, susceptible to 'enforcement'.
Exactly how is that? Well, our Constitution allows a mere 20% of senators the right to request a recorded vote. And though this may have seemed reasonable in the 18th century, there's simply no way our founding fathers could have foreseen the take-your-clothes-off political theater that has allowed every tuned-in citizen to follow every move their senator makes. There's nowhere for conscience and discretion to hide, so almost every senator has gotten in line--the party line; this is especially true of Republicans, who tend to be hierarchical in disposition. Before the days of instant media coverage, the legislative record was known to congressional insiders, but few others. Instead, a candidate's reputation would be buttressed by endorsements from men of stature. In other words, the world has changed so dramatically that there's literally nothing left of it. All politicians are naked unto the electorate.
Yet this is an obvious disaster, leaving senators fearful that if they step out of line, the strongman and his minions will know how they voted and remove them from power. So, they instead vote the way they feel they 'should' to please the party boss, meaning that there's nothing left of the 'objective', above-it-all role that the Senate formerly played.
Forgetting the importance of secrecy, as we've done, is easy. But, once the secret ballot is identified as the key to balancing our politics, the remedy is obvious: its occasional use in one of our two deliberative bodies, namely the Senate. And to satisfy constitutional law, senators would conduct a recorded vote while also voting in secret.
* Senators, one-by-one, walk up to the presiding officer, announce their vote, and cast their folded paper ballots (one printed 'yea' and one 'nay') in either the 'Active Vote' or 'Discard' basket.
* Next, the presiding officer counts the paper ballots by hand, with witnesses present to confirm the results.
* If the result is different from the verbal vote, senators are offered the chance to change their verbal vote. It is unlikely any would.
And for those who enjoy the theater of roll-call votes, a secret ballot would involve the Senate's presiding officer reading each folded piece of paper, one-at-a-time, taken from the Active Vote basket. With the country watching from afar, the announced votes, one-by-one, would be tallied on our screens, with the 100-count vote gradually revealing itself.
But is implementing a tradition of secret voting possible? All it takes is the recognition that this is the time and the opportunity to return secrecy to one of our two governing bodies, and in so doing, fix much of our current political ill humor. Party bosses, "Take a hike."
The reasoning here is that allowing for a secret ballot in the Senate on particularly sensitive issues (a vote threshold of possibly 5/9--56 or more out of 100) will set a precedent that encourages great minds to become senators. It would underline the trust that voters place in their senators to vote their conscience, and would erase some of the partisanship that has poisoned American politics. Most importantly, it would redeem the promise that is secret ballot voting--democracy's beating heart.
In the future, when senators are under pressure to tow the line regarding 'special interests', they would always have the option to call for a secret ballot, assuming their case was strong enough to garner 56 votes. For example, in this article on using wood burning pellets to qualify for green energy credits, the science is obviously against home state interests, and yet the two moderate senators from Maine couldn't possibly vote against their state's forest industry, unless they were voting by secret ballot, in which case they could then heed common sense and scientific consensus.
Even the Constitution itself calls for some secrecy. Article I, Section 5, Clause 3: "Each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either House on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the journal." Thus, the Senate, led by a majority leader, could conceivably implement an informal 56-vote threshold for a secret ballot, that would see a verbal vote recorded (to satisfy the above clause in the Constitution), while a written vote is counted and becomes the definitive decision.
Furthermore, in any given case, passing an initial decision to vote by secret ballot (56 or more out of 100) would not be easy. There would be many senators who might vote their conscience if given the opportunity, but who wouldn't dare vote for a secret ballot on a question, since this would tip their hand (though alliances between trusting senators would form: "Call for a secret ballot on this, and I'll return the favor some day"). So, secret ballots, yes, but only on rare occasions.
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