Cultures of Voting

The book's originality lies in subjecting to critical scrutiny a technology that is so often taken for granted in discussions on democracy. We know that the secret ballot was a good thing, and that it is an old technique, perhaps co-eval with modern procedures of voting. This book reveals that it was not so that the rise of such procedures is a historical accident andnovelty, and that the meaning and procedures of the secret ballot still vary enormously across different places.