Secret Ballot

The secret ballot is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous. The key aim is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery. The system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy. However, the secret ballot may increase the amount of vote buying where it is still legal by paying lukewarm supporters to turn out and paying lukewarm opponents to stay home, and therefore may reduce the costs of buying an election.

Secret ballots are suitable for many different voting systems. The most basic form may be blank pieces of paper, upon which each voter writes only his or her choice. Without revealing their votes to anyone, the electors place the ballots into a sealed box, which is emptied later for counting.

In the modern world one of the most common forms of the secret ballot involves pre-printed ballot papers with the name of the candidates or questions and respective checkboxes. Provisions are made at the polling place for the voters to record their preferences in secret. The ballots are specifically designed to eliminate bias and to prevent anyone from linking voter to ballot. This system is also known as the Australian ballot, because it originated in Australia during the 1850s. In the United States, it is also known as the Massachusetts ballot since Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to use the secret ballot. In the U.S., voting by secret ballot was universal by 1892, but criminal prohibitions against paying people to vote for a particular candidate or not were instituted in 1925.