Scott Rafferty, petitioners' attorney in Bridgeman v. Shelley, case number S128311

Theresa Bridgeman, Stanford '03, is now a Rhodes Scholar studying at Oxford University. A registered California voter, she wanted to vote absentee by fax in the upcoming election, but didn't want to sign an oath waiving her right to have the contents of her ballot kept secret.

So she hired another Rhodes Scholar, Scott Rafferty, now an attorney in Mountain View, California, to take her case to court. He started at the top and obtained a judgment on October 18, 2004, from the California Supreme Court, which ruled that Secretary of State Kevin Shelley would need to "show cause" why the "secrecy waiver oath" contained in AB 2941, which established a statewide system for faxing ballots to local election officials, shouldn't be taken off the books.
It also ruled that Secretary Shelley didn't have to do this until AFTER the election, due to what they said would be the "undue confusion and uncertainty in the election results” that the immediate removal of this provision in the law would "engender."

Even though she seems to have won a victory (or at least be ahead on points), Ms. Bridgeman, according to her attorney, Mr. Rafferty, has opted to send her voted ballot to her local election officials by post, thereby incurring greater expense but more certainty that her choices will be tabulated without her having to give up their secrecy, which is what "engendered" her law suit (in Bridgeman v. Shelley, case number S128311) in the first place.

Mr. Rafferty spoke today with California Politics Today about this case, the issue of privacy rights in voting-by-fax systems generally, and the implications of both for the future of democracy in the context of technological change with which the law is having a hard time keeping up.

You can hear what he had to say by clicking here.