EDIT: See @AnimePhantasm comment below! My friend called the election board and they confirmed what @AnimePhantasm and @fmstrat commented! This was Virginia reusing last year’s envelopes.

OP I am an absentee voter in Blacksburg just next door. Shine a light on the blacked out part. I am 99% sure this is legit, they just crossed out the witness requirement. I can see the word witness under the sharpie in your picture. Virgina doesnt have to do that witness thing anymore. We did at the last general election, so I am guessing they just reused the same envelopes. You should call and ask your elections office before alerting the news. They are hardworking folks whose jobs are already 100 times harder then they used to be. Stirring up reports of election fraud where it isn’t happening makes us just as bad as them.

  • otterpop@lemmy.world
    301·
    1 month ago

    I don’t believe there is, and if there was, it could be used for some really nefarious purposes!

    • HappyTimeHarry@lemm.eeEnglish
      25·
      1 month ago

      in my state (OR) you can sign up for an email that says when your ballot was counted but not who you voted for.

      • leds@feddit.dk
        21·
        1 month ago

        Yeah there is a good reason for that to be secret: it prevents buying votes because you can’t prove who you votes for, if someone offers you money to vote a certain way you can always take the money and vote the other way, no way to prove how you voted.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
      51·
      1 month ago

      TBH idgaf who knows my vote history, I want the peace of mind that it was counted correctly.

      • boydster@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        19·
        1 month ago

        I totally hear that, but at the same time it’s really important for a functioning democracy that the vote be secret. For one, it empowers a suppressed class to vote against their suppressor’s interests without fear of retaliation.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
          32·
          1 month ago

          There is already a record of who voted for what, all of your fears could be taking place as things are now. Making it accessible to the person, even with hoops to jump through, would only be an improvement.

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
            6·
            1 month ago

            No, there’s not. There’s a record of who voted. There is a record of your political party in most states. There is no record of who you actually voted for.

            • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
              11·
              1 month ago

              The majority of votes in the USA are electronically counted, and a ballot itself is a record of a vote as well. What there isn’t is a searchable index of who voted for what, and I apologize for my unclear language.

              But the likelihood of oppression based on availability of those vote records is still very much there even if the voter themself doesn’t have access.

              • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
                21·
                1 month ago

                Back to school. Vote-buying breaks democracy. Not having proof of who you voted for makes vote-buying pointless. Yes, your vote could be miscounted. This is generally less of a problem than the general population being able to sell their votes and can be mitigated in a variety of ways which don’t tie votes to voters.

                  • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
                    21·
                    1 month ago

                    What’s to stop me from filling it out the way I said I would, going to the voting office and saying the ballot I had previously was lost/damaged/spoiled and then voting differently than how I was paid to vote?

                    The premise behind a secret ballot is it can’t be proven how you vote. You can still sell your vote (illegally), you just can’t prove you voted the way you said you would. As shown above, absentee ballots don’t remove that distinction. I suppose the criminals could just trust each other…

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 month ago

        Now THAT is some privilege lol

        Plenty of places in the US where you risk personal danger if people know how you voted.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
          11·
          1 month ago

          Then those individuals shouldn’t share how they voted, but I want the freedom to see how my vote was counted.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
          12·
          15 days ago

          And they have the right to conceal their vote, as they should, but why should I not have the right to reveal mine even to myself, Necromancer?

          • boydster@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            11·
            14 days ago

            That’s not how this started, moving the goalposts is pretty cheap. I was literally linking to an issue happening in this vary election that illustrates why secret ballots are so important. A position which, if you recall, you began by stating was invalid because you misunderstand (or, now more clearly, willfully misrepresent) how democracy in the US works, and your proposed “solution” only helps illustrate the easy ways vote buying and manipulation would be introduced without secret ballots. I’ll block you, for obvious reasons. Good luck

            There is already a record of who voted for what, all of your fears could be taking place as things are now. Making it accessible to the person, even with hoops to jump through, would only be an improvement.

            Edit: additional context for added relevance