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. |
