As we approach next week’s online event celebrating the 150th anniversary of the act which introduced the secret ballot for municipal and parliamentary elections (event details here), it’s perhaps worth looking again at how the public voting system that served Britain for so many centuries worked. We’ve touched on public voting in earlier posts, but our ongoing research on Victorian politics continues to throw up new discoveries.
Public or ‘open’ voting is often associated with the most glaring iniquities of Victorian elections, including the consumption of vast amounts of alcohol, violence and the harassment of electors at the poll, as well as bribery and the intimidation of voters by employers and landlords. In parliamentary elections voters declared their choices orally, stating how they wished to vote in front of election officials and assembled spectators, so that everyone knew immediately what their choices were…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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