What Beyoncé and Lil Jon know about ballot selfies can help fix voting rights

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/05/beyonce-lil-jon-ballot-selfies-voting-rights

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Since when is a selfie a crime?

In New Hampshire, it’s whenever you take that selfie at the polls, as so many thousands of Americans did on Tuesday. And it might cost you a $1,000 fine.

Even as Lena Dunham and Lil Jon were busy making the admittedly unsexy election process viral again, the state’s chapter of the ACLU went to court during the US midterms homestretch over a new law that prohibits “ballot selfies”:

Voting is an act of extraordinary importance. And it is because of this importance that the First Amendment also ensures that citizens are free to communicate their experiences at the polls, including the people for whom they voted if they so wish.

The sanctity of voting in private may be one of the pillars of democracy, but in an age of byzantine disenfranchisement rules and empowering social-media platforms, outlawing a picture of your candidate selection is a missed opportunity and a failure of imagination. It is a serious fail in our Instagrammed times, but hardly unusual for our stagnant democratic process.

Much that is presented “for the public good” in politics can actually become a tool of disenfranchisement and voter suppression, even with the best of intentions. Like banning ballot selfies, requiring an ID to vote seems sound – but when we delve into the complicated histories (and Tuesday-afternoon realities) of voting and political control, there are reasons why most advocates for voting rights oppose such requirements. And voter-ID laws are much easier for the average person to understand than, say, computer-assisted gerrymandering.

Opponents of ballot selfies rightly point to historical examples of voter coercion in the workplace. Voters could face social or illegal pressure from their jobs to vote a certain way. But coercion, as the ACLU argues, is not the same as willingly sharing the bubbles you just filled out – probably with a sense of pride, to encourage your friends to get out and vote, too. Old-school protections of privacy have not kept pace with our continually evolving understanding of privacy in the age of social media – and we should be wary of slapping Facebook-happy teens with criminal charges for being enthusiastic about their civic duty. So much of our lives are lived publicly; it seems strange – maybe downright stupid – to claim that people can’t willingly share their ballot when divorce selfies and #AfterSex snaps are a thing.

Is absolute privacy really the best way to ensure the future of democracy?

Consider Beyoncé.

In 2012, she made headlines – along with Kim Kardashian and Sean Hannity – for posting her ballot to millions. The ensuing debate was about the legality of the move – for Beyonce, her absentee-ballout share was legal; Sean Hannity’s was not – but what of the legions of young voters influenced not by Beyoncé’s choices so much as her pride in making a choice at all?

Voting rights advocates canvas the nation to register voters, but simply registering does not guarantee turnout. Even in the aftermath of nation-changing events in places Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting of Michael Brown, only some 128 new voters could be confirmed.

If someone like Beyoncé – or something the size of her Tumblr – can make voting as cool as makeup, fashion and feminism, shouldn’t we embrace the publicity of private acts of democracy as a good thing?

Instead of immediately assuming ballot selfies will send our political system deeper into the cesspool of corruption, couldn’t we marshal the allure of social sharing for collective good? What if posting photos on Instagram exposed some polling site’s systemic issues that disenfranchise voters? (What if they already are?)

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund sent out a press release this election day detailing instances of voters across the United States facing “barriers and discrimination at poll sites”. Dozens of them were given incorrect instructions, lacked access to an interpreter or, as in one case, were told incorrectly to “go register and vote in the next election”. (The voter should have been provided with a provisional ballot, although sometimes that’s not much of an improvement.)

How powerful would it have been, on election night, to see a social visualization of people who could not exercise their right to vote, instead of live blogs of voter disenfranchisement cases being pushed through a legal maze that may never reach that many public ears?

Publicizing the frequently imperfect process of voting doesn’t have to be seen in a negative light. Lil Jon remixed his popular party anthem “Turn Down for What” into the midterm rallying cry and hashtag of young voters this year with #TurnOutForWhat:

But his attempts to get crunk on his absentee ballot were derailed. How do we know this? Because Lil Jon took to Instagram to complain that the state of Georgia never sent his absentee ballot.

Not be deterred, he hopped on a plane to cast his ballot in person. Not everyone can do that – hardly anyone can – and while Lil Jon didn’t post a ballot selfie, but more than 3,145 of his fans “liked” his peach sticker, and followed his journey through the process. They even got inspired:

I voted because of Lil Jon.

And isn’t the whole point of democracy? To encourage more participation in it?