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I think this falls under the category of, "No law is ever going to be 100% successful. We don't hold any other law that you like to this standard, so we shouldn't hold this law to that standard, either." Take your example:
Correct. We've figured that this is a pretty significant imposition on one's person, one that can be exploited by bad actors to suppress votes (similar to poll tests). However, what you miss is that the law actually does make it illegal to take a picture of your in-person ballot. We still make it illegal! We still will prosecute people if they get caught doing it! That we don't apply 100% of the world's resources to rooting out 100% of all possible cases would be a silly standard by which to judge this law. (Thus, as you say, "Laws and judges have to take practically and other rights and priciples into account.") Hell, our extremely strict laws against murder don't eliminate 100% of murder. We don't say, "Well, unless we prohibit any individual from ever possessing any object that could be used to aid in murder and impose a panopticon surveillance state, we'll never get rid of the theoretical possibility of murder happening... Therefore, we shouldn't bother prohibiting murder at all." That would be ridiculously silly, and it's silly here, too.
We have basic rules in place that nearly perfectly work, except for the barest of theoretical edge cases. So, when you say that technology has thrown some wrenches into the machinery, I agree. It has really made non-in-person voting far more susceptible to coercion than it was before. Photoshop has not solved the problem, for our technology can just as easily take video which is not nearly as amenable to manipulation (though I highly doubt that a significant portion of folks who would be targets of coercive efforts would likely be skilled enough in even Photoshop to matter).
Furthermore, there is no evidence that allowing easy means by which to curtail secrecy actually causes even the minutest amount of voter disenfranchisement.
In the end, I think reasonable people can disagree on where the balance of interests lay. The primary thrust of my post is that folks seem to have completely forgotten the barest purpose of secrecy in voting. From your comment, I think you understand this purpose.
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