Vitalik’s Optimism retro-funding post mentions a few instances where secret ballots are used today, and which could arguably be improved by these cryptographic primitives:
The Israeli Knesset uses secret votes to elect the president and a few other officials
The Italian parliament has used secret votes in a variety of contexts. In the 19th century, it was considered an important way to protect parliament votes from interference by a monarchy.
Discussions in US parliaments were less transparent before 1970, and some researchers argue that the switch to more transparency led to more corruption.
Voting in juries is often secret. Sometimes, even the identities of jurors are secret.
In general, the conclusion seems to be that secret votes in government bodies have complicated consequences; it’s not clear that they should be used everywhere, but it’s also not clear that transparency is an absolute good either.
Vitalik’s Optimism retro-funding post mentions a few instances where secret ballots are used today, and which could arguably be improved by these cryptographic primitives:
I have not read this one, thank you for the link!