Ballot
document used to cast votes in an election
A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th century.
For each election, each voter uses one ballot, and ballots are not shared. In the simplest elections, a ballot may be a scrap of paper on which each voter writes in the name of a candidate, but governmental elections use printed ballots to protect the secrecy of the votes. The voter casts their ballot in a box at a polling station.
In British English, this is usually called a "ballot paper". The word ballot is used for an election process within an organization (such as a trade union "holding a ballot" of its members).
Etymology
The word ballot comes from Italian pallotta, meaning a "small ball used in voting" or a "secret vote taken by ballots" in Venice, Italy.
History
In ancient Greece, citizens used pieces of broken pottery to scratch in the name of the target of the ostracism.
The first use of paper ballots to conduct an election appears to have been in Rome in 139 BC, following the introduction of the lex Gabinia tabellaria.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ballot” is document used to cast votes in an election. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ballot, document and used, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “document used to cast votes in an election” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q905151. The Library of Congress control number is sh85011336. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Ballot primary sources, Ballot archive and Ballot research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Ballot” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.