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 that is placed in a sealed ballot box or by pulling levers on a machine in a voting booth. 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 in the ecclesia. 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.