ballot

The process of voting in an election. In political elections in democracies ballots are usually secret: voters indicate their choice of candidate on a voting slip which is then placed in a sealed ballot box. Ballot rigging is a term used to describe elections that are fraudulent because of interference with the voting process or the counting of votes.

Under the Athenian and other democracies in ancient Greece small balls were used for secret voting; this method was known as psephisma (from psephos, a pebble, the original instrument of balloting). It was used on all questions affecting the status of individuals. These were of two kinds: lawsuits, and proposals of ostracism against a politician, which carried a sentence of exile for ten years. In Rome the system of open suffrage allowed so much corruption and intimidation that a series of laws (139–107 BC) prescribed the use of the ballot for all business transacted in the popular assemblies.

Secret voting at elections of members of Parliament was advocated by English reformers in the early 19th century; it was included in the draft of the Reform Bill of 1832, a bill on the subject having been introduced by Daniel O'Connell in 1830. It was also among the demands of Chartism (a mainly working class democratic movement), and frequent attempts were made to introduce it between 1832 and 1872. The secret ballot was first used in England in 1870, in the London School Board elections. Two years later, William Forster's Ballot Act introduced it into parliamentary and municipal elections. Almost all countries holding elections now use the secret ballot.