Is my/your vote secret?

Voting

It's voting time in the US and something I recently noticed.

A person running for office came to my door to ask for his support. We spoke for quite some time and it really seemed as this person really knew me. All of my political sidings.

So, I asked how this person knew so much of me. First they pulled out a phone and showed me this app that made me feel as though it knew more about me than I do. I was simply amazed that it was able to discover so much about me.

Over the next few days I began really putting some thought to this. I work in Information Technology and have no social networking presence other than LinkedIn that I rarely use and there are no personal thoughts or views on it. Only professional networking. I know there are sites that scour every bit of public information they can and sell this information. I'm not naive and know there is not much publicly about me and voting information is all secret... right?

I received my ballot the other day and recently opened it. Other than the ... on it it has bar codes on it as well as a QR code and numbers I am sure are associated with the printed bar codes.

I voted and re-read the instructions to ensure my vote would be counted. The instructions stated insert your ballot into the secure envelope and sign and date it.

The envelope had my name and address on it as well as some additional numbers including a bar code. I began looking at these numbers and they did not seem to match. Then I found a number that almost when unnoticed. I looked at my ballot and sure enough there it was just below the bar code.

Giving this some serious thought, I've come to this conclusion. I couldn't tell you this is absolutely the way it is but it almost is in my mind.

Years ago when I went to school, I learned that when you voted it was a secret ballot.

Hmm, now it appears as though the government collects ballots and each ballot is associated with an envelope that 100 percent identifies you or in this case me.

This could vey well explain how my friend the politician could know so much about me. Looking forward, I guess the question is, how is the government going to use this data?