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MLB Hall of Fame and BBWAA should keep ballots private until Jan. 1

By Bill Felber

Plaques for the 2019 class at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum hang next to empty spots where the plaques for the 2020 class will eventually go. Since the museum reopened in late June, some aspects of the exhibits have changed. With the plaques, for example, there's now signs and a rope strung in front of the display to deter visitors from touching them, when that used to be something the museum allowed people to do.Baseball Hall of Fame
Plaques for the 2019 class at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum hang next to empty spots where the plaques for the 2020 class will eventually go. Since the museum reopened in late June, some aspects of the exhibits have changed. With the plaques, for example, there's now signs and a rope strung in front of the display to deter visitors from touching them, when that used to be something the museum allowed people to do.Baseball Hall of Fame /
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The MLB Hall of Fame should prohibit voters from releasing their HOF ballots until the Dec. 31 voting deadline is past

MLB Hall of Fame voting is underway, which means Hall of Fame lobbying is also underway.

Less than a week into the election process, more than a dozen ballots have already been made public. If recent history is any guide, by the time the results are announced in January about two-thirds of the ballots will have been released voluntarily by the voters themselves.

This business of Hall of Fame vote tracking has become an industry unto itself. There are websites devoted to following the ballot-by-ballot movement, both on a historical and contemporary basis. Sports shows, especially on MLB Network, are guaranteed to comment weekly, if not more frequently, on the status of leading candidates.

This is all great, I suppose, for building interest in the eventual result. But it is a terrible way to run an election. The process would be more equitable to the candidates and also to the integrity of the result if the Hall of Fame required voters to keep their ballots sealed until after the deadline for submitting them has passed.

The answer to the “why” question can be found in virtually every other election of importance that is conducted. Consider the recent election for president. In that election, as has been the case basically since the Republic was founded, officials were prohibited from releasing early counts out of a (legitimate) concern for influencing the election process itself.

Think about it. If you knew that a candidate you supported trailed badly in the early voting, wouldn’t that be likely to depress your inclination to take the trouble to vote for a sure or even a likely loser? Conversely, wouldn’t you be inclined to get your vote out early in order to build an appearance of momentum behind your candidate?

Those are exactly the reasons why it is illegal to release early vote counts before polls are closed in serious elections. And, I believe, the concept of voting early and publicly as a means of attempting to build an aura of inevitability behind some candidates is precisely the reason many writer-voters go to great lengths to release their ballots to as much public exposure as they can get.

Without subjecting HOF voters to a truth serum, it’s impossible to prove this premise beyond a shadow of a doubt. But I think the evidence is pretty strong, particularly with respect to the most controversial candidates.

Consider the two most controversial players: Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. At the 2020 voting deadline, both were polling at about 71 percent of ballots made public. Yet when the final results were released, both finished significantly off that pace, Bonds at 60.3 percent and Clemens at 61 percent.

In fact, of the top 11 vote-getters in 2020, 10 saw their percentages fall – and by an average of 5 percent – from the forecast to the final count. The only one whose count rose was Omar Vizquel, from 49.5 percent among pre-released ballots to 52.6 percent in the final tally.

So it’s pretty obvious that a significant bloc of Hall ballots are using their own ballots as a tool to attempt to influence other voters, even if they’re not successful in doing so. If you strongly believed that, just to pick one guy, Todd Helton deserves election, wouldn’t you be inclined to put your vote out early to create the impression of an “everybody’s doing it and you should too” movement in Helton’s favor?

Prohibiting public release of ballots until after the Dec. 31 deadline would not stem legitimate efforts to build interest in the HOF vote announcement itself. That would still leave nearly a full month before the Jan. 26 announcement for both voters and MLB itself to build interest, including by releasing individual ballots.

All it would do is prevent writers from attempting to use their own ballots as a cudgel over the next month to attempt to build momentum for – or against – a candidate whose vote they wanted to influence.

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