In the Thursday newsletter I asked about the anonymity of the electronic voting at the NPC: Question: Every delegate has voting buttons in front of them. Are their votes actually anonymous? It would be trivial to map each vote to a specific button. Does making voting electronic potentially reduce the number of people willing to vote no or abstain?

Someone who needs to remain anonymous pointed me to this tweet by Zhang Lifan: https://twitter.com/zhanglifan/status/971487732072525824 【人民大会堂電子表決器：廖承志的兒子廖暉投反對票被查出】法學泰斗江平在《沉浮與枯榮——八十自述》一書中爆料指，「我也曾聽過人大常委會主管人員的內部的說法。他說這個表決器在設計的時候，是按照能夠查出來的思路設計的，如果誰不表決，是能夠查出來的。」

summary: well known legal expert Jiang Ping revealed in his book that a senior NPC official had once told him the electronic voting system was designed to be able to track how individuals voted