A legal battle is raging in the US about whether you should be able to take a selfie at the voting booth this November.
Snapchat, the social network that's synonymous with selfies, is fighting a recent ban of ballot selfies in New Hampshire. The California-based startup filed its first amicus court brief last week in which it argues that sharing selfies while voting is protected under the First Amendment.
"Ballot selfies are the latest in a long historical tradition of voters sharing their civic enthusiasm—and their votes—with their social networks," Snapchat's lawyers argued.
On a state-by-state basis, the legal repercussions of taking photos at the voting booth are quite varied. The Huffington Post compiled each state's stance, and found a wide range of rules and repercussions.
Snapchat's home state of California, for instance, says that taking photos while voting is prohibited, but doesn't mention any kind of punishment for doing so. Vermont, on the other hand, can fine you $1,000 if you allow your ballot "to be seen by another person with an apparent intention of letting it be known how he or she is about to vote.”
States that oppose photography at the ballot box do so to protect the secrecy of the decision. The main argument is that sharing one's vote could lead to voting fraud or manipulation. “Whether an exchange of money, or for having to live with someone or some other fear, you don’t want anyone to go into that booth and end up voting for someone they didn’t really want to vote for, but felt they didn’t want to pay that price for whatever reason," New Hampshire secretary of state Bill Gardner told The New York Times.
Besides the fact that Snapchat wants people sharing as much as possible in its app, the company has a special interest in covering politics. Snapchat has a small team of journalists led by former CNN correspondent Peter Hamby who assist in making crowd-sourced "live stories" in the app around debates, election primaries, and so on. Hamby also hosts a Snapchat-produced politics show for the 2016 election exclusively in the app.
The New Hampshire court battle is, of course, specific to New Hampshire — the idea behind fighting it there is, if Snapchat wins, it could set a legal precedent nationwide.
"Given Snapchat’s largely user-generated approach to news coverage, the company has a unique concern about laws that purport to block regular people from capturing and sharing content that comments on issues of the day," its amicus brief reads. "Such laws impose real restrictions on expression and newsgathering as they have evolved in the 21st century."
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