Every other Tuesday, the team behind Civics 101 joins NHPR’s Julia Furukawa on All Things Considered to talk about how our democratic institutions actually work.
Voters across New Hampshire will head to the polls next week and fill out their ballots in the state primary election, but the ballots we use in today’s elections have come a long way. This week, Civics 101 host Nick Capodice joins us to discuss ballot design and why it’s so important.
Transcript
Nick, how did we used to vote in the U.S.?
Most voting in early America was a system called viva voce, which means “word of mouth.” People would go into their polling place and announce to a registrar who they were voting for in front of everyone. Now, it was fraud proof because people heard you and they saw you vote, and anybody could check the logs later so you couldn't fudge the numbers. However, it had a problem, a pretty severe problem. There's a lot of intimidation going on in viva voce. Party bosses and their muscle could go up to you and they'd say, "Hey, why'd you vote for that guy?"
So eventually we moved on to ballot boxes. You'd get your ballot pre-filled out from your local party's newspaper, or you get it handed to you by a party member at the voting place. So you were always voting a straight ticket. And since the ballots were printed on different colored paper depending on the party you voted for, people would still see who you voted for. So that didn't work. And also there was a lot of box tampering. People would find hidden compartments with ballots already stuffed in these early ballot boxes. So long story short, we don't do it that way anymore.
So how did we go from these public declarations and then ballot boxes to a more secure way of voting?
Well, this was an innovation courtesy of our allies to the south, 10,000 miles away, the fine country of Australia. By the late 19th century, some states had started to adopt what is called the Australian ballot. So this was our first secret ballot system. You'd go into a private booth, fill out a ballot and turn it in to be counted. And these ballots were on white paper so nobody could see who you voted for.
Another big turn is when the states started to run elections instead of the parties in power. So there was far less inter-party corruption. And by the 1930s, every state had switched over to lever machines, which sort of punched holes in pieces of paper. That means the ballot is counted faster and with more accuracy. And we finally started to adopt optical machines, like we're all taking the SATs, back in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, after the disaster that was Bush v Gore in Florida in 2000, punch card ballots were entirely eliminated. And here we are with what is, quite honestly, the most secure system we have yet had.
Have we perfected the ballot, or do the designs of our ballot continue to be controversial in some ways?
Uh, yes and no, Julia. Again, it's the most secure it's ever been. But the issue of the design of the ballot is still quite touchy. Specifically, how the candidates' names appear on the ballot, the ballot order. Candidate name order matters maybe a little bit more than we all realize. And every state chooses the name order differently. Now, who you choose for president will likely not depend on name order, but the further down you go when you get to county treasurer or sheriff or registrar of deeds, name order matters a lot more.
And finally, ballot design matters most when an election is really, really close. So think back again to the 2000 Florida election. Different voting districts had different methods of deciding which votes would count and which votes would not. And whenever that happens in any election, because there is no blanket method that everybody agrees to, it's going to come down to which side has the better lawyers. Because the side that has the better lawyers and more money is going to determine which votes get counted in favor of their candidate. So, in short, in close elections, whoever has the most money usually wins.
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