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Comment by sonnyblarney | Hacker News Reader

This is terrible and reminds me of that South Park episode where everyone murders everyone else 'no secrets'.

In Scandinavian countries I think you can look up someone's income tax - but it's a little bit bureaucratic and that person will also be notified that you looked them up. Not sure if it's necessary, but the sharing logic is necessary.

If you want to know how someone voted, you have to pay $5 for each person, they will be notified, and you can't publish the information, or something like that.

Or better yet - it should be confidential.

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For those who remember it, the peer pressure and shaming implications of these apps remind me more of the season 8 episode, "Douche and Turd." Particularly how everyone in the town ostracizes Stan until he's willing to vote, even though he doesn't really care and doesn't like either choice.[1]

I guess South Park is like the Simpsons now... There's literally an episode for every situation.

[1]: http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Douche_and_Turd

My favorite part of that episode is that P. Diddy's "vote or die" campaign is literal.

I don't think you can tell how someone voted. It pulls the party affiliation off of which primary you voted in.

Sorry, I was technically incorrect.

But the pragmatism of: they were a member of X party during Y election is a very close proxy to 'how they voted' - moreover, the motivation of the app makers is still oriented towards the publishing of essentially private information i.e. voting orientation.

Which is not helpful.

I believe Americans are far less extreme than the pop culture news outlets (basically almost all cable news) would have us believe. If you check Pew polling there is actually wide consensus on a lot of issues which see partisan but are really not.

In Finland anyone can check these online for free. For example the income of SuperCell and MySQL founders:

https://verokone.hs.fi/henkilo/1978Paananen%20Ilkka%20Matias https://verokone.hs.fi/henkilo/1962Widenius%20Ulf%20Michael

No one is telling how anyone voted. Just whether they voted.

It shares party affiliation and is kind enough to label your contacts with Rs and Ds. That way you can easily de-person those with non mainstream opinions.

Voter registration rolls are public records, and in many states selection of partisan affiliation is part of registering as a voter (in order to determine which ballot you received in primary elections).

"Voter registration rolls are public records," They shouldn't be

And just because they are public doesn't mean it isn't a bad idea to make them easily available.

How do you propose having an open election with secret voter rolls?

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