For most people, the history of voting in these United States has to do with who is allowed to vote — white, propertied men; all white men; literate black men (1870-1965); women (1920); and lastly, previously excluded by the other enfranchisements, American Indians (1924). Asian Americans, by virtue of being denied citizenship, were excluded from the voting booth until 1943 for Chinese Americans; 1946 for Asian Indians; and 1952 for Japanese Americans.
However, there is another story, largely untold, concerning how we vote. The voice vote, the show of hands, taking sides (physically moving to one side or the other), “voting with your feet,” using tokens — beans, marbles, pebbles, or other objects — the paper ballot, voting machines and computers are all means of voting, all of which have been used in the United States.
At the time the Constitution was written, most voting was by voice vote. So few people were entitled to vote, this presented little problem; however, there was no standard for how a vote would be taken. Some places used beans, bullets, corn and even, from the earliest times, pieces of paper — to be placed in a hat, basket, box or bucket.
What must be particularly stunning to us today is that all of this methods are public — the secret ballot is largely a modern adoption. Even the paper ballot required an open public demonstration of the voter’s choice. Ballots could be color coded, and required voters to enter the polling place carrying their obvious votes, and telegraphing their intentions to anyone who sought to prevent them, by any means possible, from casting their vote. Voters were killed during Election Day riots, while hired thugs made sure that others never made it to polling place. Voters did not stand in orderly lines, awaiting their turn to exercise their civic duty.
Polling places were often outside, and were surrounded by noisy, unruly throngs of electioneers, thieves, drunkards and voters. Election Day was an official holiday, and meant to be celebrated. Campaigning took place there and then, as it was considered unseemly to enlist voters before the day of the vote.
Obviously, voting in the 18th and 19th centuries was subject to fraud on a massive scale. Other than physical force and violence, inducements such as money, liquor and even jobs were used to influence the vote. Landlords controlled the votes of their tenants, and employers could influence the votes of employees. Before the advent of printed ballots distributed at the polling place, ballots were easily forged and the number of votes cast could easily outnumber the eligible voters by several fold.
Attempts to reform the abuses often failed, as it was considered cowardly to conceal how one voted. Public voting was considered to be the essence of the democratic process — what would one have to hide?
Today, as much as we consider the secret ballot to be sacred, and part of the American way, the system of voting we now use originated down under — in Australia. Australians developed the secret ballot with the Victoria Electoral Act of 1856, which was later adopted by the English Parliament in 1892.
The Australian ballot arrived amid great controversy in the United States; our New York governor vetoed the proposition three times before it was finally adopted in 1890.
It was the slow expansion of voting rights from an elite minority of white manhood to one including men of unequal social status, education and wealth, that finally overcame the notion of open voting. One wonders whether women’s suffrage would have had much meaning without the secret ballot. The Australian ballot saved the vote, and it may well have saved marriage in the process.