Tennessee on verge of banning phones, cameras at polling places

[Adam Griffin]

AFAIK it's passed both the House and the Senate. I can't find much on it yet but from what little wording I've seen, it makes it sound as if you can't use mobile devices within the designated no-campaign range of a precinct.

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[Adam Griffin]

Well, I thought this would be a bigger deal than it appears to be based on commentary here. Tennessee is essentially banning the ability to document voter disenfranchisement and other shenanigans at the polls. Is this a common law in other states?

[Adam Griffin]

Minnesota: The Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State strongly discourages voters from using cameras or video recorders in the polling place. And you can't share your ballot results with anyone in the polling place, but it is unclear whether you could legally share it with the rest of the internet.

Reasonable, as usual.  Record if you must...but make sure there's a good reason for it.  Like suspected disenfranchisement.  Which should always be recorded regardless of the law.

I can tell you this: if I see something going on at the precinct, I will video it and they can sort out the charges later. I have seen multiple videos uploaded to the internet from GA showing nefarious activities at the ballot box before (it is against the law here), so it's probably not heavily enforced in most cases.

I don't see the issue either. Already illegal in Canada.

Yeah, but you guys actually have legitimate elections.


So here's a map from the article cinyc posted. I tried to categorize the states as best as possible:

Maroon - photography/video of all types banned
Red - photography/video bans set by each county
Orange - photography/video banned when disclosing a vote, how someone else voted or similar cases
White - photography/video allowed

[Adam Griffin]

And ballot selfies are endangering secrecy of votes and enable voter intimidation.

selfies of all stripes endanger civilization as we know it.  They are the 21st-century equivalent of sitting naked on a photocopier and leaving photocopies of your hairy ass and sack as a prank in the office mailboxes of your colleagues.  That's okay once in a blue moon, so to speak, but with mobile phones the attention whore mentality become ubiquitous, so that children today don't know good manners.

Actually, civilization as we knew it ended already on December 21, 2012.  The Maya accurately predicted that.  What they didn't prepare us for was what form the new civilization would take.  Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, instantly messaging your ballot suffrage, along with your latest bowel movement, to friends--strangers apparently don't exist anymore--is not the hallmark of an inferior civilization.  Just one that takes some getting used to.

You'll love this, then.

https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ?t=2m14s