page_title: Secret ballot
section_title: United Kingdom
hierarchical_section_title: Secret ballot / History / United Kingdom
caption_attribution_description: English: Cardiganshire Election advert
context_page_description: The secret ballot, also known as the Australian ballot or Massachusetts ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous. This forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote buying. This system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.
  Secret ballots are used in conjunction with various voting systems. The most basic form of a secret ballot utilizes blank pieces of paper upon which each voter writes his or her choice. Without revealing the votes to anyone, the voter folds the ballot paper in half and place it in a sealed box. This box is later emptied for counting. An aspect of secret voting is the provision of a voting booth to enable the voter to write on the ballot paper without others being able to see what is being written. Today, printed ballot papers are usually provided, with the names of the candidates or questions and respective check boxes. Provisions are made at the polling place for the voters to record their preferences in secret, and the ballots are designed to eliminate bias and to prevent anyone from linking voter to ballot.
context_section_description: The demand for a secret ballot was one of the six points of Chartism. The British parliament of the time refused to even consider the Chartist demands, but it is noted that Lord Macaulay, in his speech of 1842, while rejecting Chartism's six points as a whole, admitted that the secret ballot was one of the two points he could support.
  The London School Board election of 1870 was the first large-scale election by secret ballot in Britain.
  After several failed attempts (several of them spearheaded by George Grote), 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. The original ballot box, sealed in wax with a licorice stamp, is held at Pontefract museum.
  However, the UK uses numbered ballots in order to allow courts to intervene, under rare circumstances, to identify which candidate voters voted for.
caption: A British "how to vote" card from 1880
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