Voting in Historical Perspective

Election Day! A word that drags the imagination to a typical scenario of hopeful people standing in long tedious lines waiting for their turn to write the future of their country onto a ballot and slip it into a box. Unfortunately it was never that simple. There has always been an element of doubt in the way elections have been dealt with. Through out history man has toiled over finding better ways to vote, better ways to choose the future of his country. This little ballot itself holds within it a deep history of its own and is moving into a whole new future of ideas.

Ballot (a piece of paper to most of us) is actually derived from an Italian word “ballatto” meaning a little colored ball. In ancient Athens, votes were taken by issuing little clay balls to each voter, and the voter would vote by depositing the ball in the appropriate ballot box, or rather, in a clay pot that served as a ballot box. Members of high courts voted for a verdict with balls. They also used stones and shells in some occasions.

The use of balls in voting is still used in some clubs today to vote for a candidate’s membership. White balls mean acceptance and black balls mean rejection. That is where the term “blackballed” arises from.

Ancient Romans used wooden tickets to vote. In elections of candidates for public offices the name of the candidates were written on the ticket. It is also said that it was the Romans who started to use paper votes from 139 BC

It is not certain whether ballots were used in the middle ages, but there is evidence that they were used in the Italian communes during the 13th century.

Ballots were used in Britain in the 15th and the 16th century to maintain secrecy of voters. In America it was first used by the British colonies and continued to be used after the American Revolution.

Concern over fraud and voter privacy brought the use of the “Australian ballot”. First used in Victoria, Australia, it was a standardized ballot that was printed by the government with a list of all the candidates and distributed at voting polls. This system was not free of faults. It was still susceptible to fraud by ballot stuffing, miss counts etc.

The next logical step was a voting machine, so the first machine was a mechanical lever machine. Each candidate’s name is placed under separate levers. The voters pull the lever of the candidate that they wish to vote for.

Punch cards are also used in different parts of the world. The voters punch their card in a punching device according to the candidate they wish to vote for. Then they can place it in a ballot box or the ballot can be put into a tabulating device.

Marksense systems are a little more sophisticated. They employ a ballot card on which candidates and issue choices are preprinted next to an empty rectangle, circle, oval, or an incomplete arrow. Voters record their choices by filling in the rectangle, circle or oval, or by completing the arrow. After voting, the voters either place the ballot in a sealed box or feed it into a computer-tabulating device. The tabulating device reads the votes using "dark mark logic," whereby the computer selects the darkest mark within a given set as the correct choice or vote.


In many countries direct electronic voting systems have been introduced; the e-voting machine, which displays the candidates on a touch-screen. Unlike paper ballots, these machines display information about each candidate aside from their party affiliation, and might even display the candidate’s photo so that there is less confusion over identity. A voter makes their choice by touching the screen. If a voter makes a mistake, such as selecting two candidates for the same office, the computer points out this error and allows the voter to correct it. Once the voter has completed the ballot, the computer allows the voter to review his or her choices. This system saves a lot of time needed for counting and leaves less chance for mistakes.

Coming towards the end of this historical journey we are now standing at a point where voting could be changed to a click of the mouse from the safety of your own home or wherever a computer is available to you.

E-voting is a much debated subject as it still has a lot of unresolved problems such us security and accessibility. These systems could be susceptible to viruses and hackers. Therefore many feel that e-voting should be backed up by paper votes. Another concern, limited accessibility of the internet may result in decreased number of people voting.

So it remains to be seen how e-voting will impact voting participation of the people.