The word for the thing you cast on election day means little ball, because for centuries people voted by dropping a pea, a pebble, or even a bullet into a box.
A ballot is the means by which a voter records a choice in an election. Today it is usually paper or a screen, but the word itself tells an older story. It comes from the Italian ballotta, a little ball.
In Renaissance Venice, voters cast secret votes by dropping small balls into boxes. The practice gave us another word too: to blackball someone, to reject them, comes from dropping a black ball to vote no.
Early Americans improvised. Before printed ballots, people voted by tossing an object into a box for their candidate. As one history records, they cast peas, pebbles, and not uncommonly, bullets. Voting was often loud, public, and anything but secret.
The modern secret paper ballot, listing all candidates and handed out at the polling place, is surprisingly recent. Called the Australian ballot, it was first adopted in the United States only in 1888, in New York and Massachusetts, to combat fraud and intimidation.
