At least in the US, the Free Speech Clause protects your right to photograph your own ballot, though local election officials are often unaware of this. Rideout v. Gardner, 838 F.3d 65 (1st Cir. 2016).
At least as of right now, that case only applies in New Hampshire, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other courts found differently, or if an even slightly different wording or legislative reasoning for a similar law would have been upheld. So no, in much of the country it still is not legal to photograph your ballot, no matter that future court cases might rule the laws prohibiting it to be unconstitutional.
Also, this is one of those cases where the reasoning just feels bizarre to this non-lawyer. “Vote buying used to be rampant, so you banned showing people your ballot, and now you have no evidence of vote buying in the century since the ban was implemented, and only very indirect and weak recent evidence of attempts to buy votes, so you can’t prove there’s still a compelling government interest in restricting this form of political speech.” AKA you had a compelling interest, succeeded in eliminating the problem, and therefore no longer have one. It’s like saying you’re only allowed to lock your door while there’s a burglar inside, and have to unlock it once they leave.
That case is from the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, a federal appellate court. It is binding precedent not only in New Hampshire, but also in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico. And it is the only federal appellate court to have ruled on the issue, which means it is still the most definitive interpretation of the law that there is for the entire country. The ruling is not based on details of statutory wording or legislative intent, so your suggestion that other courts might rule differently based on those things is completely baseless.
And it does seem very nature to this retired free speech lawyer. In any free speech case, the government has the burden of showing (1) that there is a significant governmental interest at stake, and (2) that the statute is narrowly tailored to that interest. The government has to present evidence for these two things, and they couldn’t. As the court notes, the constitution “is not satisfied by the assertion of abstract interests”. The country was a very different place a century ago, some states do allow you to photograph a ballot, and the state was not able to point to a single instance of a person photographing a ballot as part of a vote buying scheme. That seems like a good reason to think that it isn’t actually a problem. And even if it were, the court points to two problems with narrow tailoring. One, that the statute prohibits a lot of highly protected political speech, such as the original posts hypothetical. Two, vote buying is already illegal, and there is no reason to think that statutes prohibiting vote buying are inadequate.
Note that nothing in that analysis is particular to the New Hampshire statute, it applies equally well to any statute that prohibits people from taking pictures of their ballots. Again, this is a federal appellate court, and the only one to have addressed this issue, so it is the strongest law there is throughout the entire country.
At least in the US, the Free Speech Clause protects your right to photograph your own ballot, though local election officials are often unaware of this. Rideout v. Gardner, 838 F.3d 65 (1st Cir. 2016).
At least as of right now, that case only applies in New Hampshire, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other courts found differently, or if an even slightly different wording or legislative reasoning for a similar law would have been upheld. So no, in much of the country it still is not legal to photograph your ballot, no matter that future court cases might rule the laws prohibiting it to be unconstitutional.
Also, this is one of those cases where the reasoning just feels bizarre to this non-lawyer. “Vote buying used to be rampant, so you banned showing people your ballot, and now you have no evidence of vote buying in the century since the ban was implemented, and only very indirect and weak recent evidence of attempts to buy votes, so you can’t prove there’s still a compelling government interest in restricting this form of political speech.” AKA you had a compelling interest, succeeded in eliminating the problem, and therefore no longer have one. It’s like saying you’re only allowed to lock your door while there’s a burglar inside, and have to unlock it once they leave.
That case is from the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, a federal appellate court. It is binding precedent not only in New Hampshire, but also in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico. And it is the only federal appellate court to have ruled on the issue, which means it is still the most definitive interpretation of the law that there is for the entire country. The ruling is not based on details of statutory wording or legislative intent, so your suggestion that other courts might rule differently based on those things is completely baseless.
And it does seem very nature to this retired free speech lawyer. In any free speech case, the government has the burden of showing (1) that there is a significant governmental interest at stake, and (2) that the statute is narrowly tailored to that interest. The government has to present evidence for these two things, and they couldn’t. As the court notes, the constitution “is not satisfied by the assertion of abstract interests”. The country was a very different place a century ago, some states do allow you to photograph a ballot, and the state was not able to point to a single instance of a person photographing a ballot as part of a vote buying scheme. That seems like a good reason to think that it isn’t actually a problem. And even if it were, the court points to two problems with narrow tailoring. One, that the statute prohibits a lot of highly protected political speech, such as the original posts hypothetical. Two, vote buying is already illegal, and there is no reason to think that statutes prohibiting vote buying are inadequate.
Note that nothing in that analysis is particular to the New Hampshire statute, it applies equally well to any statute that prohibits people from taking pictures of their ballots. Again, this is a federal appellate court, and the only one to have addressed this issue, so it is the strongest law there is throughout the entire country.