Eric Trump Deletes Illegal Ballot Picture — After We Pointed it Out — ProPublica

Eric Trump Deletes Illegal Ballot Picture — After We Pointed it Out

by Jessica Huseman

Nov. 8, 2016, 4:32 p.m. EST

Who says Twitter doesn’t lead to change? Eric Trump, son of Donald Trump, deleted a picture of his ballot this morning after Electionland pointed out that ballot pictures are illegal in the state of New York, where he voted. He has deleted his tweet, but not before our tweet was retweeted more than 900 times:

A quick reminder to other New York voters: This is actually illegal. Please do not post a picture of your ballot (or a ballot selfie). https://t.co/zOlnCHwVB8
— Electionland (@electionland) November 8, 2016

Here’s his original tweet:

But, like Justin Timberlake’s mild brush with ballot selfie law this one is not likely to result in any actual legal action.

For what it's worth, posting pictures like this continues to be illegal because of concerns over ballot privacy. In theory, someone could buy your vote or otherwise coerce you into voting for a specific candidate, and ask you to take a picture of it to prove it. Regardless of pressure, if you live in New York please do not tweet pictures of your ballot. If you live elsewhere, check this handy guide to see if you can post a ballot selfie.

About Electionland

ProPublica’s Electionland project covers problems that prevent eligible voters from casting their ballots during the 2020 elections. Our coalition of newsrooms around the country are investigating issues related to voter registration, pandemic-related changes to voting, the shift to vote-by-mail, cybersecurity, voter education, misinformation, and more.

Questions? Read our FAQ.

Follow Electionland

Partners

and 150+ local and national newsrooms. Sign up to become a partner here.

Technical Partners

More Election Tools

The User’s Guide to Democracy

Congress works for you. Here’s how to be a better boss.

Represent

See what your representatives in Congress say and do.

ProPublica on IFTTT

Do more with ProPublica data and automated notifications.

Latest Stories from ProPublica

Chevron Will Pay Record Fines for Oil Spills in California

Idaho Legislature Approves $2 Billion for Schools to Repair and Replace Aging Buildings

A Marijuana Boom Led Her to Oklahoma. Then Anti-Drug Agents Seized Her Money and Raided Her Home.

A Diplomat’s Visits to Oklahoma Highlight Contacts Between Chinese Officials and Community Leaders Accused of Crimes

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page