On: Romanian court annuls result of presidential elect...

[gretch]

Under this framework, what if you simply bribed people to vote for your candidate of choice: e.g. Here's 20 euro, vote for this guy.

You could still say "The people who voted for this guy have agency and decided for themselves."

But this doesn't really pass a smell test for what we want democracy to look like.

Similarly, if you live in a country and you see billions of dollars poured into your election advertisements from USA, Russia, China, etc, you'd be like "wtf are we even sovereign?"

[miohtama → gretch]

That's why there is voting secrecy. You can pay someone 20 euros but they vote someone else.

[adriancr → miohtama]

Paying for votes is illegal almost everywhere. In the US it's up to 5 years jail time.

That is done for good reason, you can't waive it away with 'voting secrecy'.

'voting secrecy' can be defeated pretty quickly by asking the voter to take a picture with phone and report it.

[ndiddy → adriancr]

Where I live it's illegal to use a camera within 100 feet of a voting booth to protect the privacy of people's votes. If you tried to take a photo of your ballot, you'd likely get asked by a poll worker to put the camera away.

[adriancr → ndiddy]

you need some imagination, this is something that has happened.

you have a phone and the voting booth is private, how is anyone going to catch you?

the other old school (90s) way was you were given an already stamped paper and you had to return an unstamped one to get the money.

or if you want to go communist old school, you had people looking at you through holes in ceiling.

[int_19h → adriancr]

The old-school Soviet approach is to run one candidate uncontested.

After all, if they are endorsed by the Party, why do you think you can do a better job, citizen?