Why on earth is it publicly available? Something like that could be abused pretty easily. I guess it lets non-voters verify that no one has stolen their vote, but still..
The voting system is a complicated balance between keeping your individual vote secret and making as much of the process transparent and public as possible. This kind of information being public is likely a check against ballot stuffing.
Not being in the business of voter suppression, I couldn't tell you anything authoritatively. But if I was, I'd use the data to find who has a spotty or non-perfect record with the hypothesis that they're more susceptible to suppression methods than someone with a near perfect record.
Then the next step would be targeting locations that lean towards one party or using a combination of retargeting ads +obvious party selectors to run a BS phone or ad campaigns that disenfranchise or provide misleading information. Like this. Which was a real thing that happened:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election...
"I know you'll probably vote for $foo. If I check after the election and find that you did|didn't vote, bad thing $bar might just happen to your friends and family."
Edit: It's probably not a particularly good threat, but it could maybe be used to suppress certain targeted demographic groups that tend to vote one way or the other.
This seems like a pretty ludicrous threat to make. You could just submit a blank ballot or vote for the opposing party and your hostage-taker would have no way of knowing.
Party registrations are public, and you can make a pretty accurate guess that someone who is registered to one party is likely to vote for that party, too.
I can imagine a situation where someone's boss doesn't like a certain party or politician, and they decide to take it out on their subordinates that they suspect will vote/have voted for them. Seeing a D or R next to an employee's name and that they voted could be enough evidence for them to face discrimination or threats not to vote.
"That" being an Election Officer? Yes, I'm supporting Tuesday.
The actual blog isn't something I contribute to frequently anymore. (a) Working on the PhD thesis proposal, and (b) haven't had much to add to the conversation lately.
Everyone who can legally vote on Tuesday should, though.
I can't think of anyway on the spot of how this could be abused. They still don't know who you voted for, just that you voted. Are there any common abuses of this data?
We use envelopes here to hide the ballot from the people in charge of the voting slot. We can put an empty envelope, or with ballots of two different parties that make it void, or with a nasty letter about the policianos, or like in Brazil where they "elected" a rhino for major https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacareco
Just don’t enroll in a political party. Political people want to turn out votes for them.
In states with a closed primary that has some blowback. Where I grew up, the Republican primary was the election. Where I live now, the Democratic primary is the election - the only GOP candidates are clowns with no organization.
Sold to ad tech agencies who can match it with whatever other information about you they already have. It's a binary yes, no, so maybe abuse is too strong a word. There's limited use.