Sen. Adam Morfeld’s proposal to allow voters to take selfie photos at their voting precincts that display their ballots and how they voted and show the photos on social media bumped into opposition Thursday from the secretary of state’s office. Deputy Secretary of State Neal Erickson told the Legislature’s Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee that it would be “bad public policy” to share photos online that “may well influence how others vote” and cautioned that the practice “could be used by partisan activists.” The broader concern is “preventing fraud at the voting booth,” Erickson said. In response, both Morfeld, a Lincoln senator, and Committee Chairman John Murante of Gretna said people have a constitutional right to express themselves and to attempt to influence how others may vote. “It’s no different than orally encouraging people to vote for candidates you support,” Morfeld said. “Freedom of expression is a protected fundamental constitutional right.”
Asked Murante: “Why should we deter Nebraskans (from) 1st Amendment political speech? Why constrain this?”
It’s no different, he said, than “when I go door-to-door to encourage people how to vote.”
Morfeld said the bill (LB787) is designed to allow voters to take photos of themselves with their ballots in an effort to “encourage, tech-savvy younger people, and others, to participate in the excitement of the civic process (and) encourage others to do so.”
Full Article: Ballot selfies opposed by secretary of state : Politics.