Voting Secrecy and the Right to Justification

While we want voters to discuss collectively, exchange views and perspectives, justify their positions, consider all interests impartially, we let them perform the crucial action of voting alone, in the secrecy of the voting booth. This paper critically considers the reasons why every contemporary democracy uses secret ballots in general elections. It then looks for alternatives which would better combine the respective benefits of secrecy and publicity, and so alleviate the tension between votes and deliberations, tension characterized by the non-justificatory nature of secret voting and its breaking down of the deliberative process. The systematic justification of votes is offered as a potentially useful tool in this regard and defended against a variety of possible criticisms