VOTING: Commercials have been running endlessly, trying to get folks out to vote. The message, however, might seem a bit confusing or even a bit menacing.

The message, from Future Forward USA Action, is that other folks will know you voted by your voting record. Your vote is confidential, but the fact that you voted is not.

Maybe it’s just us, but the commercials we saw seemed somehow threatening — with sort of a “we will all know what you did” message.

No. No. No. Voting should not instill fear.

We contacted Brett Perry, director of elections for McKean County. He told us ballots are always confidential, and no one will ever know who you voted for; that information simply isn’t kept.

A person’s voter history is “only going to tell you when you voted,” Perry said. “If there’s a way we can tell who voted, that’s considered a naked ballot and by Pennsylvania law, then that gets thrown out.”

The history is a record of your participation in elections, but it doesn’t say if you wrote in Big Bird instead of voting for one of the candidates on the ballot.

Want to see what your voting history says? Reach out to your county’s elections office, and put in a request for yours.

It’s also possible to purchase a list of voter histories, as many candidates will do to see who active voters are in the county. A candidate might have better luck getting a vote from someone who heads to the polling place twice a year — for the primary and general election — than someone who goes every four years.

We hope that commercial didn’t dissuade anyone from exercising their right to vote. It’s always important, every election.