Primarily, a little ball, used in the practice of secret voting. Secret voting is thence called "voting by ballot," whether it be a ball, a ticket, or a mechanical device that is used for the purpose. Wherever the practice of deciding questions by vote has obtained, some form of secret voting has always been found necessary in order to insure untrammeled action by the voter.

The dicasts in Greece voted secretly by means of balls, stones, or shells with marks. From this use of marked shells in popular voting came the so-called ostracism, or secret vote of the people, by which they drove into exile those who became obnoxious to them. Tabelloe, or tickets, were chiefly used by the Romans. If the vote concerned a change in the law, the tickets were marked V.R., the initial letters of the words 'Uti Rogas,' expressing assent to the proposer's proposition: and. for 'Antiquo,' expressing adherence to the old law. If the vote concerned the election of candidates to a public office, then the tickets bore the names of the candidates. The system of secret voting in Rome was fixed by various laws, of which the Lex Gabinia, B.C. 139, was the first; but the popular assemblies voted by ballot as well as by acclamation long before the passing of these laws.

These ancient forms of secret voting continued into the Middle Ages, and especially, the method of voting by colored balls, from which the usage takes its name. Balls may be used in voting in various ways; e.g. the voter may deposit a ball in either of two boxes, so conjoined that no one shall be able to say into which he drops it; or he may be presented with two balls, a white and a black, and so drop one of them into a box that it shall be unknown which he used. This original form of balloting is still employed in the election of a Pope by the College of Cardinals, and commonly in voting on the question of the admission or rejection of members of private clubs.

In modern times, however, the most common form of ballot has been the written or printed ticket. In the New England Colonies the practice of voting 'by papers' was in vogue from the very first, and there is some reason to suppose that some of the Puritans had become familiar with that usage in Holland or elsewhere on the Continent. The ballot has been occasionally employed in legislative assemblies. It was used in the Venetian Senate; and in Great Britain it was first called for, not for the purpose of elections, but of protecting the independence of members of Parliament in their votes on proposed legislation. After the Restoration, in 1660, it was used for purposes of ostracism in the Scottish Parliament. In 1710 a proposal for secret voting was carried in the English House of Commons, but rejected by the Lords. From 1840 to 1845 the ballot was in use in the French Chamber of Deputies. But the idea of secret voting in deliberative and legislative assemblies responsible to the people is now universally abandoned, as inconsistent with the fundamental principles of popular government, of which publicity and the free criticism rendered possible by publicity are the great safeguards.

Toward the end of the Eighteenth Century vote by ballot for elections to the British Parliament was advocated by some of the Whigs; and it was one of the first things demanded by English Reformers at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, the followers of Bentham being specially earnest in advocating it. It stood in the original draft of the Reform Bill of 1832. Grote first proposed it in 1833, and renewed the motion every year till 1839. It was one of the six points of the Chartists. In 1851 the proposal of vote by ballot was carried in the Commons against the opposition of Lord J. Russell and the Liberal Government of that time by a majority of 51. The report of a select committee of the House of Commons in 1869 greatly contributed to decide public opinion in favor of the ballot as a necessary safeguard against corruption, intimidation, disorder, and all sorts of undue influence at elections. The result was Mr. Forster's Ballot Act of 1872, which introduced secret voting at all parliamentary and municipal elections except parliamentary elections for universities. It had already been adopted for school-board elections in 1870. With the introduction of the ballot at parliamentary elections, the public nomination at the hustings, which had been so often associated with rioting and violence, disappeared.

Voting by printed ballot is now the method generally employed in elections in countries where constitutional government exists. The ballots may be furnished by the candidate for office, the political party engaged in promoting his election, or by the Government. The first or the second of these plans has usually been adopted in local and general elections in the United States. But the fact that several officers whose names may conveniently appear on a single ballot are usually to be voted for at the same election, the great cost of printing and distributing the ballots to multitudes of voters, and the organization of party 'workers' requisite for this work of distribution, have combined to render it impracticable, usually, for the individual candidate to supply the voters with ballots bearing his name, and to throw that burden upon the political party. Hence the 'party ballot,' which has done so much to build up the great party organizations in this country, and which has been a prolific source of corruption, fraud, and intimidation of the individual voter.

These defects of the 'party ballot' in the last few years of the Nineteenth Century produced a widespread public sentiment in favor of ballot reform, which in many of the United States resulted in the adoption of the third plan above referred to namely, the printing and distribution of the ballots by the State. With some modifications, due to local conditions or to the efforts of party managers to derive a partisan advantage from the system, the form commonly employed is the 'official' or 'Australian ballot,' so called from the fact that it was first employed with success in some of the Australian commonwealths. Its distinguishing feature is the arrangement of the names of all the candidates for a given office, whether nominated by party organizations or by independent effort, in order on the ballot, the voter indicating his choice by some mark written by him opposite the name of his chosen candidate.

The usual and preferable form of the official ballot is the "blanket ballot," in which the names of all the candidates for an office are arranged in alphabetical order, irrespective of party affiliations. In a few of the United States, however, the practice of arranging the candidates in party columns, each column headed by an emblem as an eagle or a star, has been adopted. This device is justified as a concession to the necessities of the illiterate voter, who may, by placing his mark at the head of a party column, cast a vote for all the candidates of that party, instead of choosing, out of an alphabetical list, the names of the individual candidates favored by him. This form of ballot is greatly favored by the political organizations for the reason which constitutes the chief indictment of the method that it tends to promote 'straight' party voting and to discourage the practice of independent voting. Certain novel mechanical devices for insuring secret voting and for obviating the more serious objections to the use of the printed ballot, will be described under the head of VOTING-MACHINE.

For a description of the process by which the State has assumed the regulation of elections, and for an exposition of the laws which have been enacted for securing the purity of the ballot, see ELECTION; ELECTORAL REFORM; CORRUPT PRACTICES; PRIMARY ELECTIONS; VOTE; VOTER; SUFFRAGE, and the authorities there referred to.