The secret ballot, also known as the Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's identity in an election or a referendum is anonymous. This forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote buying. This system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.
Secret ballots are used in conjunction with various voting systems. The most basic form of a secret ballot uses paper ballots upon which each voter marks their choices. Without revealing the votes, the voter folds the ballot paper in half (if necessary) and places it in a sealed box. This box is later emptied for counting. An aspect of secret voting is the provision of a voting booth to enable the voter to write on the ballot paper without others being able to see what is being written. Today, printed ballot papers are usually provided, with the names of the candidates or questions and respective check boxes. Provisions are made at the polling place for the voters to record their preferences in secret, and the ballots are designed to eliminate bias and prevent anyone from linking voters to the ballot.
In systems of direct democracy, such as the Swiss Landsgemeinde, voting is typically conducted publicly to ensure all citizens can observe the outcome.
Secret vs. public methods
By the late 20th century, the secret ballot had become commonplace for individual electors in democracies.
Votes by elected officials are generally entitled to the same secrecy as other citizens when their capacity to vote derives from their status as citizens, such as at elections. However, votes in their public capacity as representatives are typically public, so citizens can judge officials' and former officials' voting records in future elections. This may be done with a physical or electronic system or through a roll call vote. Some faster legislative voting methods do not record who voted in which way, though witnesses in the legislative chambers may still notice a given legislator's vote. These include voice votes where the volume of shouting for or against is taken as a measure of numerical support and counting of raised hands. In some cases, a secret ballot is used to allow representatives to choose party leadership without fear of retaliation against those voting for losing candidates. The parliamentary tactics of forcing or avoiding a roll call vote can be used to discourage or encourage representatives to vote in a manner that is politically unpopular among constituents (for example, if a policy considered to be in the public interest is difficult to explain or unpopular but without a better alternative, or to hide pandering to a special interest) or to create or prevent fodder for political campaigns.
Public methods of citizen voting have included: Oral proclamation, where votes are shouted out one at a time, usually at an assembly Going to a particular area at an assembly, such as a town meeting or the Iowa caucus. This is the origin of the term poll for an election, originally meaning "top of the head", which is what was being counted at these assemblies. Small balls or other objects, such as corn, pebbles, beans, bullets, colored marbles, or cards. This is the origin of the term ballot, originally meaning "small ball". Raising of hands at an assembly Cutting a brightly colored ballot (with the color corresponding to the party of choice) out of a newspaper and bringing it to a polling place An open ballot system
Private methods of citizen voting have included: Writing the name of the preferred candidate or outcome on a piece of paper and putting it in a container (which excludes illiterate voters) Marking a government-printed ballot (which may exclude illiterate voters if they only include words and cannot get assistance, but some ballots include colors, symbols, or pictures to avoid this)
History
Ancient In ancient Greece, secret ballots were used in several situations like ostracism and also to remain hidden from people seeking favors. In early 5th century BC the secrecy of ballot at ecclesia was not the primary concern, but more of a consequence of using ballots to count the votes accurately. Secret ballot was introduced into public life of Athens during second half of the fifth century.
In ancient Rome, the (English: Ballot Laws) were four laws that implemented secret ballots for votes cast regarding each of the major elected assemblies of the Roman Republic. Three of the four laws were put in place in relatively quick succession, with one each in the years 139 BC, 137 BC, and 131 BC, applying respectively to the elections of magistrates, jury deliberations excepting charges of treason as well as the passage of laws. The final of the four laws was implemented more than two decades later in 107 BC and served solely to expand the law passed in 137 BC to require secret ballots for all jury deliberations, including treason.
Before these ballot laws, one was required to verbally provide their vote to an individual responsible for tallying the votes, effectively publicly making every voter's vote known. Mandating secret ballots had the effect of reducing the influence of the Roman aristocracy, who were capable of influencing elections through a combination of bribes and threats. Secret balloting helps assuage both of those concerns, as not only are one's peers unable to determine which way you voted, there is additionally no proof that could be produced that one did vote certain way, perhaps contravening directions.
France Article 31 of the Constitution of the Year III of the Revolution (1795) Full text of the Constitution of the Year III on Wikisource states that "All elections are to be held by secret ballot". The same goes with the constitution of 1848:"Article 24. Suffrage is direct and universal. The act of voting is by secret ballot." Constitution of 4 November 1848 – via Wikisource. voters could hand-write the name of their preferred candidate on their ballot at home (the only condition was to write on white paper. . .) or receive one distributed on the street.See the picture captioned at the National Assembly website. . The ballot was folded in order to prevent other people from reading its contents.
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte attempted to abolish the secret ballot for the 1851 plebiscite with an electoral decree requesting electors to write down "yes" or "no" under the eyes of everyone. But he faced strong opposition and eventually relented, allowing the secret ballot to occur.Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, chapter VII. . "For the bourgeois and the shopkeeper had learned that in one of his decrees of December 2 Bonaparte had abolished the secret ballot and had ordered them to put a 'yes' or 'no' after their names on the official registers. The resistance of December 4 intimidated Bonaparte. During the night he had placards posted on all the street corners of Paris announcing the restoration of the secret ballot."
According to the official website of the National Assembly (the lower house of the French parliament), the voting booth was permanently adopted only in 1913.
Belgium The British Ballot Act 1872 inspired Belgian Catholic minister Jules Malou to implement the Belgian Secret Ballot Act of 9 July 1877. The subsequent 1878 Belgian general election led to a victory for the Liberal Party.
The 1877 law introduced the ballot (as opposed to simply writing any name on a piece of paper) as well as the voting booth.
United Kingdom
The demand for a secret ballot was one of the six points of Chartism.In the words of the petition that was published in 1838:
"The suffrage, to be exempt from the corruption of the wealthy and the violence of the powerful, must be secret." The British parliament of the time refused even to consider the Chartist demands. Still, Lord Macaulay, in an 1842 speech, while rejecting Chartism's six points as a whole, admitted that the secret ballot was one of the two points he could support.
The London School Board election of 1870 was Britain's first large-scale election by secret ballot.
After several failed attempts (several of them spearheaded by George GroteKinzer, Bruce (2004), "George Grote, the Philosophical Radical and Politician", Brill's Companion to George Grote and the Classical Tradition, London: Brill, pp. 16–45), the secret ballot was eventually extended generally in the Ballot Act 1872, substantially reducing the cost of campaigning (as treating was no longer realistically possible) and was first used on 15 August 1872 to re-elect Hugh Childers as MP for Pontefract in a ministerial by-election following his appointment as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The original ballot box, sealed in wax with a licorice stamp, is held at Pontefract museum.
Australia and New Zealand
In Australia, secret balloting appears to have been first implemented in Tasmania on 7 February 1856.
Until the original Tasmanian Electoral Act 1856 was "re-discovered" recently, credit for the first implementation of the secret ballot often went to Victoria, where the former mayor of Melbourne William Nicholson pioneered it,Blainey, G 2016, "The story of Australia's people: the rise and rise of a new Australia", Viking, Penguin Random House, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia, p.18. and simultaneously South Australia.Terry Newman, (2003), 49(1) Aust J Pol & Hist 93, accessed May 20, 2015 Victoria enacted legislation for secret ballots on 19 March 1856.
Singapore A secret ballot is used in Singaporean elections to ensure the election's integrity and that the voter's decision is respected and kept secret. Ballot boxes undergo tamperproofing checks before use to ensure that they are not tampered with. These boxes are sealed (except for the opening slots) prior to the voting window, which opens at 8a.m. SGT for 12hours. To facilitate accounting, each ballot has a serial number with a counterfoil attached to it; the counterfoil is also used for facilitating vote tracing if a court order is needed. Per safety and privacy reasons, voters are forbidden from using electronic devices inside a polling station, and may not bring ballot papers out of the polling station. They are also advised not to make any markings (other than a X or a cross) by which they may be identified, as such votes may be rejected by officials. Exit polls are also illegal under the election act to maintain secrecy of voting; however, sample counts, a variant of the procedure, have been used since the 2015 general election to reduce speculation from unofficial sources.
After the voting window ends, a ballot box has its opening sealed and is transported to the polling station's designated counting centre under police escort. The boxes then undergo accounting before being opened for vote-counting to ensure that they are fully present and that their seals are intact. After the election, ballots and other official documents used for the election are placed in a new, separate box, and transferred to a secure vault inside the Supreme Court where it will be locked for up to six months under safe custody. Only a judge of the Supreme Court has the discretion to open the sealed boxes for inspection, although the power is to institute or maintain a prosecution or an application to invalidate an election. After six months, the boxes are transported to Tuas South Incineration Plant and destroyed thereafter.
United States
Before the final years of the 19th century, partisan newspapers printed filled-out ballots, which party workers distributed on election day so voters could drop them directly into the boxes. Individual states moved to secret ballots soon after the presidential election of 1884, finishing with Kentucky in 1891 when it quit using an oral ballot.Eldon Cobb Evans, A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States# (1917) online.