Donald Trump is attempting to select his own citizenry and control who can vote by gathering the personal details of all Americans, Arizona’s top election official has warned.
Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, fears that the Trump administration’s active efforts to forcibly extract voter files from 30 states including Fontes’s own are part of a bigger plan to gather vital information on all US citizens into a centralised database. “Trump is trying to amass a master list that will allow him to declare someone an enemy of the state,” he said.
In theory our vote is anonymous in the sense of who we cast a ballot for is anonymous but voter registration has a ton of info involved and I’m sure it wouldn’t be terribly difficult in this day and age for a nefarious billionaire to be able to find the data.
Is your ballot tied to you though? I guess that’s the confusing part to me because when we go to vote, we just show our voting card (or ID, or mail with address and name, or have someone vouching for you) and get given a generic slip of paper we put an X on and fold up before putting into a box. Nobody looks at it until the box is emptied and counted when polls close. Even with voter registration data I can’t see how it’s possible to trace a vote back to you without there being a really conveniently placed security camera
No, you are validated as a valid voter when your ballot is cast, but the contents of the ballot are not tied to you