Finally, one may consider that the only way of dealing with such issues consists in obtaining empirical evidence regarding the respective effects of secrecy and publicity and weighing them up.[38] More principled arguments could be developed however. Such principled arguments could take at least two (non-exclusive) forms. According to one strategy, even in a society where the level of coercion on voters is very weak on average, it is reasonable to assume that those who will suffer most from such risk of coercion (given their higher dependence on others) are the least advantaged. There may thus be a maximin case for secret ballots on such grounds, putting priority on the protection of the most vulnerable. The other strategy would consist in stressing the fact that the extent to which the coercion of voters obtains in a given society may fluctuate, and hence evolve at some point for the worse, in line with political or economic degradations. A preventive approach would thus consist in claiming that, once coercion increases to an extent such that it becomes worrying (provided that there are levels of coercion that would not be worrying in the first place), it would then be too late to switch back to secret voting. This could justify preserving vote secrecy from the start, even when the risk of coercion is currently negligible.[39]