Counting polls required assembling—all in favor of the Federalist stand here, all in favor of the Republican over there—and in places where voting was done by ballot, casting a ballot generally meant tossing a ball into a box. The word “ballot” comes from the Italian ballota, meaning a little ball—and early Americans who used ballots cast pea or pebbles, or, not uncommonly, bullets. In 1799, Maryland passed a law requiring voting on paper, but most states were quite slow to adopt this reform, which, in any event, was not meant to make voting secret, voting publicly being understood as an act
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