Secret ballot
Today, printed ballot papers are usually provided, with the names of the candidates or questions and respective check boxes.
In systems of direct democracy, such as the Swiss Landsgemeinde, voting is typically conducted publicly to ensure all citizens can observe the outcome.
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.
The same goes with the constitution of 1848:[8] voters could hand-write the name of their preferred candidate on their ballot at home (the only condition was to write on white paper[9]) or receive one distributed on the street.
[11] According to the official website of the Assemblée nationale (the lower house of the French parliament), the voting booth was permanently adopted only in 1913.
After several failed attempts (several of them spearheaded by George Grote[14]), 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.
[15] However, the UK uses numbered ballots to allow courts to intervene, under rare circumstances, to identify which candidate voters voted for.
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,[16] and simultaneously South Australia.
[citation needed] 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.
It was drafted by Lewis Naphtali Dembitz, the uncle of and inspiration for future Supreme Court associate justice Louis Brandeis.
Massachusetts adopted the first state-wide Australian ballot, written by reformer Richard Henry Dana III, in 1888.
Article 29 of the Convention requires that all Contracting States protect "the right of the person with disabilities to vote by secret ballot in elections and public referendums".
Some democracies, e.g. the United States, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Albania or India allow disabled voters to use electronic voting machines.
Article 29 also requires that Contracting States ensure "that voting procedures, facilities and materials are appropriate, accessible and easy to understand and use."
This measure is thought to be justified as a security arrangement so that false ballot papers could be identified if there was an allegation of fraud.
One example was in a close local election contest in Richmond-upon-Thames in the late 1970s with three disputed ballots and a declared majority of two votes.
In 2012 in Colorado, this procedure was ruled legal by Federal District Judge Christine Arguello, who determined that the U.S. Constitution does not grant a right to a secret ballot.
