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Think again before posting your ballot selfie

Posting your photo with a completed ballot is illegal

What better way to celebrate the relief of voting in this year’s long-winded, divisive election than posting online a photo of your face in front of a freshly filled out ballot for your friends to see?

Well, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey on Thursday reminded Colorado residents: “ballot selfies” are illegal in the Colorado, and technically considered a misdemeanor.

For the unacquainted, the following are definitions from the crowd-sourced online dictionary Urban Dictionary, defining a “selfie:”

“A strange phenomenon in which the photographer is also the subject of the photograph. Usually conducted because the subject cannot locate a suitable photographer to take the photo, like a friend.”

“A ridiculous practice of narcissism.”

And:

“The beginning of the end of intelligent civilization.”

In any event, according to Colorado statute §1-13-712, “No voter shall show his ballot after it is prepared for voting to any person in such a way as to reveal its contents.”

Though the law was written well before the age of social media, Lynn Kimbrough, communications director with the Denver District Attorney’s Office, said pictures posted online that include completed ballots would violate the statute, originally intended to protect against voter fraud and ensure voter privacy.

“This is an old, old law, and it was never written to ban social media selfies,” said Kimbrough.

No one in the state of Colorado has ever been prosecuted for the offense, said Kimbrough, and the Colorado Legislature the past two years tried to change the law.

“I was appalled,” Rep. Paul Rosenthal, D-Denver, said of learning about the statute, when he himself put a photo online of his ballot, and was told by a friend to take it down lest he face prosecution.

Rosenthal said the law was written in a time when the mob, the Ku Klux Klan, and one’s employer pressured individuals into voting a certain way.

“Those days are over,” Rosenthal said. “Taking a picture of your ballot and putting it on Facebook is your U.S. constitutional right to speak as you wish. And the Colorado Constitution goes further and says you have a right to publish.”

Yet his fellow politicians, citing concerns over the risk of a person selling off votes, have continually voted down the measure.

Fewer than 20 states have an outright ban on the practice of ballot selfies. Recently, in two states, courts have decided that the act is within a person’s constitutional right, and have overturned any measures that disallow the practice.

Mike Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado, said Monday “It’s alarming a Denver prosecutor would put out this statement, which is a tacit threat on an activity that is squarely protected by the First Amendment.”

However, unless a drastic turn of events occurs within the next three weeks, it looks like Coloradans should refrain at least for this election cycle from taking “ballot selfies.”

jromeo@durangoherald.com



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