INDEX: Ballot Box Fixtures in Retail

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This Ballot Box Fixtures in Retail index page aggregates links
to all post and photos of retail merchandising, display, and outfitting
as well as deep Background courtesy of Wikipedia.

BACKSTORY: A ballot box is a temporarily sealed container, usually a square box though sometimes a tamper resistant bag, with a narrow slot in the top sufficient to accept a ballot paper in an election but which prevents anyone from accessing the votes cast until the close of the voting period.

It will usually be located in a polling station although in some countries, notably Ireland, Italy and Russia, there may also be ballot boxes that are taken to people’s homes where they would otherwise be unable to travel to the polling station. When very large ballot papers are used, there may be a feeder mechanism to assist in the deposit of the paper into the box.

Transparent ballot boxes may be used in order for people to be able to witness that the box is empty prior to the start of the election (i.e. not stuffed with fraudulent votes).

At the close of the election all boxes can be taken to a single location for tallying (The count) and the result declared. Alternately the boxes can be tallied at the polling station, with individual stations announcing their results to be tallied (known as precinct count).

Ballot boxes are obsolete in some jurisdictions because of the increase in paperless electronic voting. The word ballot derives from voting systems based upon the use of a small ball instead of a voting paper: see blackball.

The first British secret ballot using ballot papers and a ballot box was held in Pontefract on 15 August 1872, under the terms of the recently enacted Ballot Act 1872. In a ministerial by-election following his appointment as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Hugh Childers was re-elected as MP for Pontefract. The original ballot box, sealed in wax with a liquorice stamp, is held at Pontefract Museum.^[1]^[2]

In the Roman Republic, each voter initially gave his vote orally to an official who made a note of it on an official tablet, but later in the Republic,^[when?] the secret ballot was introduced, and the voter recorded his vote with a stylus on a wax-covered boxwood tablet, then dropped the completed ballot in the sitella or urna (voting urn), sometimes also called cista.^[8] Paper ballots were used in Rome to some extent as early as 139 BCE.^[9]

In ancient India in the 10th century Cholla era, in Tamil Nadu, palm leaves and pots were used to elect representatives to village administrations through the Kudavolai system.^[10]^[11] The candidates’ names were written on palm leaves,^[10] and these were placed inside a pot.^[11] Winners were chosen through the drawing of random ballots.^[10] While this system may have been used before the 10th century, there is no direct historical evidence as of 2024.^[10]

In ancient Greece, voting was done by dropping small balls or tokens into ballot boxes to select preferred candidates.^[9] This method was also used in modern historical secret societies, which used white balls to vote someone into the organization, and black balls to keep them out, the origin of the word “blackball”.^[9] As of 2022, citizens of Gambia voted by dropping marbles in colored drums, marked with the photo and logo of selected candidates.^[9] This system was introduced in 1965 to address illiteracy in voting.^[12]

The first British secret ballot using ballot papers and a ballot box was held in Pontefract on 15 August 1872, under the terms of the recently enacted Ballot Act 1872. In a ministerial by-electionfollowing his appointment as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Hugh Childers was re-elected as MP for Pontefract. The original ballot box, sealed in wax with a liquorice stamp, is held at Pontefract Museum.^[13]^[14]

The first paper ballots and ballot boxes in the United States began appearing in the early 19th century, replacing previous voice voting practices.^[15] However, these were not popularized until the 1850s, upon the use of the Australian Secret Ballot, a paper with each candidate’s name pre-marked.^[9] This system was used in the United States until reforms were passed in the 1880s.^[16]Voting was mostly by Australian Secret Ballot until automatic mechanical voting machines, operated with levers, became ubiquitous in the 20th century (1910-1980).^[9]^[15] Punch card voting and optical scanning machines (similar to ScanTron), both of which require paper ballots and therefore ballot boxes, came to market around the 1960s.^[15] Currently, the most popular way to vote in the United States is through optical scanning machines.^[15]