About Different Types of Voting

History of

• The concept of members of a society consulting on matters of state was an experiment in government in a world where decisions were generally made by whoever had the biggest army. The Athenians had the most stable democracy on the Greek peninsula and operated their government by direct democracy, a system that we would call a "town hall" today. Every citizen voted on every issue, right down to road repairs and court verdicts. The Romans introduced the concept of representative legislators who acted for the people before western democracy dissolved into empire and feudalism where, again, the party with the biggest army won. The Age of Enlightenment and the French and American revolutions of the 18th century reintroduced the concept of citizens voting to direct their government. Although the great philosophers favored direct democracy, the French and Americans adopted republican forms of government.
  
  

Evolution

• As long as so few could vote, the direct vote, as used in ancient Greece, was a convenient way to vote. In 13th century England, King John granted votes to wealthy landowners called barons, but the majority, the merchant and peasant classes, remained unrepresented. This type of separation still exists in the House of Lords in Parliament. By the time the French overthrew their monarchy in 1789, direct votes were still the norm and the definition of what made a "citizen" controlled who could vote. In the new United States, the system still relied on landowners standing up in town meetings. The secret ballot, a type of ballot used only for sensitive issues by the Greeks, became the standard, first in Australia and then in Great Britain and the United States by the end of the 19th century.
  
  

Features

• Paper ballots became the medium used as suffrage, or the right to vote, expanded to include more members of a society instead of just male landowners. With the invention of the paper ballot, the secret, or Australian, ballot was introduced to lessen the chance that parties could intimidate voters, or electors, to vote a certain way.
  
  

Type

• Today, manual or electronic recording devices have taken the place of paper ballots in many places. Like the paper ballot, they are completed by the elector on Election Day. Absentee ballots are ballots mailed or distributed to electors who will not be present in their home precinct on Election Day. Affidavit ballots are completed before an election at a central location in a municipality or township by electors who will not be able to vote on Election Day. Provisional ballots are given to electors whose right to vote in a particular precinct is in doubt and are counted only after the identity or qualifications of the potential elector are confirmed.
  
  

Misconceptions

• Those who believe that their vote doesn't count are just wrong. Elections have been decided by just a few votes as recently as 2000 and local government races are frequently decided by fewer than a dozen votes.