Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1878 — The Right to a Secret Ballot. [ARTICLE]

The Right to a Secret Ballot.

The Legislature of Minnesota at its last session, for the purpose of preventing frauds in elections, enacted a law requiring that in cities Avhen a ballot should be cast at any election, the judges of the poll should indorse on its back a number which should correspond with the number of the vote on the poll-book, This act the District Court

of Ramsey county has pronounced i^nconstitutional, as violative of the right of the voter to cast a secret ballot, as the numbering of each ballot enables any one so disposed to identify it and discover by whom it was cast. That secrecy is an essential characteristic of the ballot has been held in a number of cases; and a provision of law which results in destroying this would be clearly invalid.