(from the French ballote, a little ball), a general expression for the practice of private voting, from its being usually accomplished by depositing a ball or ticket. Its most important signification in modern politics is when it is applied to the great question of the secret or public exercise of the suffrage in elections of members of the legislature. The vindicis tacitae libertatis, as Cicero calls it—the giving effect to the exercise of opinion in such a manner as to defeat by secrecy the influence of other persons on him who has to exercise the function—has been sought after in many countries and times. In Greece the dikasts gave their verdict by ballot, according to arrangements varied from time to time. It was signified by a mark on a shell, or by the depositing of a ball or a stone, white or black according to the verdict; whence comes the proverbial reference to "a white stone" as connected with good fortune, and the expression "black-ballings," which is sometimes even still practical as well as figurative. The Greeks, indeed, like the members of clubs and societies at the present day, had two methods of taking the vote—either by two balls and one box, or by two boxes and one ball. The well-known ostracism was a species of condemnation by ballot, arising out of the old constitutional principle, that on questions of personal privilege—whether it were for conferring on the candidate what the ordinary citizen did not enjoy, or depriving him of his ordinary legal rights—the vote of a certain number of the citizens taken secretly was necessary. Of the ostracism as exercised in Athens, Mr Grote, who is a great champion of the ballot, gives an interesting vindication in his History of Greece, where he endeavours to show that, as a mere removal from the state without a forfeiture of property or position, or any other privation, it was the gentlest manner in which the republic could protect itself against those whose waxing power threatened a danger to the constitution, which, if not checked, might produce more disastrous effects, not only to the state, but to the aggrandizing citizen himself.

Among the Romans, just as we use the word ballot, tabella or tabula, a ticket, was employed to express the voting of the citizens or judges in comitia or courts of justice. In voting for a law there would be two tickets—one inscribed V. R., uti rogas, or assent; the other A., the initial of antiquo—for the old law. When it was a case of election, the names of the candidates were written on the tabella, the voter putting a punctum or puncture opposite to the favoured name; and Cicero speaks of how many puncta a man will have in such a tribe, as we speak of the number of votes one will have in a ward. The tabellas were cast into a cista, and the officers called distributores are supposed to have been those who cast up the votes. The different laws from time to time establishing secret voting were called Tabellariae Leges. Among these, the enactment most resembling the ballot in its modern acceptation, called the Gabiana Lex, for the election of magistrates, dates from about 140 years before Christ. Others are named the Cassia Lex, Papinia Lex, and Celia Lex.

Secret voting was a peculiarity of the Venetian senate, and the first shape in which the ballot was demanded in Britain was not for the purpose of elections, but of votes in parliament. In a work published after the Revolution, called State Tracts, being a collection of several treatises relating to the Government, privately printed in the reign of King Charles II., a tract is reprinted, called "The benefit of the Ballot, with the nature and use thereof," supposed to have been written by Andrew Marvell. Voting by ballot in the legislature was a frequent demand of the popular party in Scotland during the reign of Charles II., and in the revulsions against the court it was at one time carried out. Sir George Mackenzie mentions an instance of its use, where it was arranged that the lord clerk-register should hold a bag to receive the "billets" at the foot of the throne, and they should be then secretly examined and burned; "which form," he says, "was thereafter punctually observed: only the register having a rooted quarrel against Southesk, did mark his billet with a nip when he received it, and thereby discovered his vote." In this country secret voting is at the present day chiefly known in social clubs, where a small number generally have the power of ostracising any candidate for admission with whom they would dislike, for any private reason of their own, to associate. The election of officers and other acts of public or joint-stock bodies, are sometimes determined by private votes, as in the important instance of the proprietors of India stock. It is generally remarked that this attempt at secrecy is ineffective, and the votes of the respective stockholders are quite well known; but they do not themselves generally seek concealment.

In France, under the constitutional charter, secret voting existed in the chamber of deputies from 1840 to 1845, when it was abolished on a project of Duvergier de Hauranne accepted by M. Guizot, who thought the scrutin secret productive of abuse. No argument can be brought from the practice on this occasion, any more than from other instances of secret voting in the legislature, to bear on the question of secret voting in elections. The two things are quite distinct, and, according to British constitutional notions, antagonistic; for, while secrecy is demanded for the elector, on the ground that he is not and should not be responsible, the proceedings of the members of the legislature have been subjected to increasing publicity, on the ground that they are responsible to their constituents for the faithful performance of the trust reposed in them. Nor is there, perhaps, any sounder practical illustration of the question to be derived from the more extensive electoral applications of the vote by ballot in connection with the events which followed the revolution of 1848. In taking the very critical vote which justified the coup d'état of December 1851 and led to the establishment of the empire, it is known that fear of disturbance compelled Louis Napoleon to have recourse to secret voting, and that the effect was guarded both by a limitation of the vote to a simple yes or no to the question of the prolongation of the presidency, and by arrangements for taking the votes in small groups, which rendered concealment difficult. The ballot is adopted in elections in several of the United States, and many arguments against it have been founded on its bad or ineffective operation there. It is said that the voter cannot preserve secrecy in presence of the popular coercion which renders it most necessary; that those to whom the secret arrangements are committed flagrantly betray their trust; and that the voters on either side of a contest are quite well known to the public at large. It must be remembered, however, that the characteristic defects of American elections are not those from which protection is sought in this country, nor are they of a kind for which the ballot is well adapted as a safeguard. There the evil to be obviated is the public and palpable coercion of the minority by the majority in the act of voting; in Britain it is the secret employment of individual influence away from the spot. The former influence may overbear, as it is said to do, the machinery for secrecy, but the latter has not the same means of accomplishing such an object.

In these references to experience may be traced some of the arguments which have at the present day been used in favour of and against secret voting. Among the arguments specifically brought forward against the proposal to adopt the system in England, it is said that the franchise is a trust which should be exercised with publicity, so that those interested may see how it is discharged. To this it is generally answered by the supporters of the ballot, that election is not a trust, but a function which each man must discharge according to what his own conscientious opinion, and not that of any other man, decides to be for the good of the community; and it is said that whoever ought to have any influence on an election, should enjoy it in the shape of a direct vote to be exercised by himself. Another argument used against the ballot has been, that it will be an enticement to falsehood, because voters will ever be induced to pledge themselves to particular sides, and under the protection of the ballot will falsify their pledges. The answer to this has generally been, that it may be a question whether it is a more immoral act to break a promise by voting according to conscientious opinion, or to vote against conscientious conviction in the coerced performance of a promise extracted by coercion. But it is generally maintained that secret voting will render such a balance of ethical difficulties unnecessary, because, as it will be impossible for the person who uses improper influence to be certain that it is efficacious, he will not have a sufficient prospect of success to tempt him to exercise it. Another argument against the propounders of secret voting has been, that were it the rule, any elector whose vote is desired by a person having an influence over him, would require to lead a life of hypocrisy, perpetually professing opinions which he does not hold, in order that the person exercising the influence may be led to believe that it has effectually entered into the nature of the voter and made him a partizan, whereas, under the system of open voting, he requires only to perform one act of hypocrisy—that of voting against his opinions—and is free to speak and act as he pleases in the other affairs of life. The answer generally given to this by the supporters of the ballot is, that the one effective act of hypocrisy—the voting wrong—is an act worth purchasing; but that it would not be worth the corrupter's while to buy a whole lifetime of hypocrisy, with the chance, if not the certainty, that the professed opinions would be discarded on the only occasions when the acting on them would be worth the purchase-money. It has been sometimes said that secrecy in voting is not practicable; but this is an argument rarely maintained as a serious objection to the ballot, for although the votes of a large portion of the community who are political partizans, and own their partizanship, must always be well known, there is no doubt that if it were sincerely set about, secrecy could be imparted to the votes of those who desire it.

Perhaps the argument which has proved the most influential against the ballot has been that, supposing it to be effective, it would to some extent deaden that open, candid system of party conflict, ranging the forces on every question palpably on either side, which is a main characteristic of British politics. In answer to this, it is generally admitted that the national characteristic has its merits, but it is said that the corruption of voters is a disease far outweighing them, the removal of which may be cheaply purchased by their sacrifice. It is generally admitted, however, that the progress of parliamentary morality during the past twenty years, and the gradual transition of electoral bribery from an act of gallant and justifiable expenditure, to a crime which men shrink from being charged with, has been removing or modifying a considerable portion of the disease for which the ballot has been sought as a remedy.

The ballot has occasioned frequent parliamentary discussions and divisions, yet it has never created any formidable conflict involving the fate of a party in parliament. After the accession of Lord Melbourne's government in 1835, it became in all Whig governments an open question, or one in which members of the government might take what side they pleased. It is one of those matters of which it is necessary, in a work like the present, to give some historical account, and at the same time to explain its existing position as a political question; and this has been done with an endeavour to avoid partizanship, and give a fair view of the arguments adopted by either side.

(Ballston, a town in the state of New York, celebrated for its spa.