The voting booth with a curtain is not
an early American icon.
In the earliest post-Revolutionary
elections, it was fairly typical for the local sheriff to run the actual voting
process: each voter showed up at the local courthouse (or shady tree in town,
or whatever), walked up to the table and loudly announced his own name and the
names of the candidates he wanted to vote for.
The candidates and their supporters
would be standing nearby, cheering or jeering as the votes were declared. Each
candidate might have a ready supply of rum and cookies to reward his
supporters.
Nothing private about it. For almost
100 years, it was S.O.P. to vote in such a way that your friends and everyone
else knew exactly what you were doing.
In the latter part of the 19th
century, Australia became the first country to use a printed ballot that could
be filled out silently and confidentially by the voter—you could vote without
anyone knowing who you voted for.
There was scattered support for this
novel election procedure in the United States before Massachusetts became the
first state to adopt the so-called “Australian ballot method” in 1888. Most
other states followed suit within a few years.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
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