The only experience I've had with the election process is voting, but..
How do they come up with statistics such as, "21% of Federal workers voted for McCain', or 'teachers voted 31-69 for the amendment'.
How could they come up with those figures if they didn't know you, where you worked and how you voted?
Where I vote the poll worker finds me on a list, writes a unique number on the ballot and hands it to me.
I'll bet that that ballot can be traced right back to me.
Lifelong, Holt's bill is not perfect, it's just better than anything out there with a prayer of being enacted before '08 elections.
Vinnie, you don't say where you vote. The only traceable voter in Texas would be possibly vote-by-mail, our highest target on voting fraud, or the "conditional" voter, in the latter case only the elections review board or district court judge will ever see the connect between ballot and voter.
As to the stats, they are arrived at by (mostly) privately commissioned polling, exit polls, polls of interest groups etc. at least here in Texas. No one in elections would have any way of discovering that info from any official source I am aware of. We can tell who voted in any given election, but assuredly not for whom they voted.
When I process a voter, I match voter ID with my combination form of eligible voters in my precinct, but once approved and signed in, I am required to have at least three ballots on the table, the voter chooses one. The ballot will have a pre-printed number on it, but that is only useful in the recount process. In the evote, I give the voter a printout with a 4 digit randomly generated PIN on it, but I don't even see that number. I promise you, unless a handicapped voter requests assistance, in which case two of us are required to assist, I have no way of knowing for whom any voter votes.