SECRET VOTING AND POLITICAL EMOTIONS

J.M. Barbalet *

The ballot is typically thought to be the least interesting and most unproblematic political
institution. Nevertheless, the pervasive assumption, that secret voting keeps elections free of
corruption and intimidation, is erroneous. Through a discussion of the debates and issues
surrounding the passage of the Ballot Act of 1872, and of the ballot in general, a new
interpretation is developed of the background and consequences of secret voting. It is shown that
particular emotions are crucial in support for the ballot, and, more important, that a major impact
of the ballot is the production of a characteristic set of emotional patterns that have consequences
not just for the act of voting itself, but for the wider structure of the political system and its
operations.

Most of the discussion of secret voting assumes that its intention and outcome are to protect the
voter against improper and illegitimate influence. But such assumptions are unwarranted. In her
study of Political Manipulation and Administrative Power, Etzioni-Halevy shows that bribery
and more subtle manipulation continued in elections after the introduction of secret voting in
Britain (1979: 44-47), the United States (57-66), and Australia (75-85). The immediate effect of
secret voting was to make it impossible for the corruptor of votes to know whether their efforts
were successful or wasted, and thus render them less efficient than they had been. But electoral
corruption in Britain continued after the passage of the Ballot Act at least until 1906 (Hanham
1959: 283). Neither should it be accepted that the intentions underlying the passage of the Act
were merely to eliminate electoral malpractices.
Nevertheless secret voting is almost universally regarded as the means by which
elections are kept free of corruption and intimidation. Indeed, this rationale is widely indicated for
contemporary support of the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Act of 1872, known as the
Ballot Act, which introduced secret voting into Britain. Representative foundational statements
that have informed generations of political scientists, sociologists, and historians claim that the
Act was passed to make elections free from corrupt influences by substituting a secret ballot for
open vote (Wilding and Laundy 1958: 25); that the secret ballot was a practical remedy for the
intimidation of the lower classes by the upper, [which] prevented the free exercise of the right to
vote by the newly enfranchised (Marshall 1950 [1970]: 89); and that [w]ith secrecy of ballot
after 1872 the workers of both town and country were able to use their vote freely without fear of
reprisals from employer or landlord (Thomson 1966: 175).
While statements such as these remain staple for our present understanding of the origin
and function of the Ballot Act and secret voting in general, the claims they make are substantiated
by precious few studies. What is in fact known suggests that such summaries are not merely in
need of qualification but seriously misleading if not simply wrong. On the Ballot Act itself, little
is written. In general histories of nineteenth-century Britain it is seldom mentioned, and when it
is, it typically receives no more than a few sentences. In the singular substantive treatment of the

*
J.M. Barbalet is Professor of Sociology and Department Head, The University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH
England. E-mail: jmb34@le.ac.uk

Mobilization: An International Journal, 2002, 7(2): 129-140

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130 Mobilization

subject, Kinzer (1982) considers the parliamentary debates on the ballot from the 1830s to the
passage of the Ballot Act in 1872 with no discussion of its consequences. On secret voting in
general, Rokkans (1961 [1966]: 116) remark of over forty years ago that very little attention has
been given to the effects of the introduction of privacy of voting on electoral procedures
continues to remain true today.
While the consequences of secret ballot are not entirely transparent, so the idea that
opposition to electoral intimidation and corruption is the necessary basis of support for the ballot
is simplistic. The secret ballot may not only protect individual voters from their employer or
landlord. It is often overlooked, as Rokkan says, that the secrecy provisions contain two distinct
elements: What has been less emphasized in histories of electoral institutions is that the
provisions for secrecy could cut the voter off from his peers as well as his superiors (1961
[1966]: 117). In almost identical terms Bendix (1964: 100) writes that secret voting is a means of
reducing class polarization in political life by isolating the individual working-class voter not
only from his superiors but also from his peers. Both Rokkan and Bendix refer to secret votings
crucial and immediate effect on class solidarity, but never develop in any of their accounts the
dimension of the secret voters isolation. Nowhere is this discussed in the relevant literature.
Prevailing models of politics focus on structures of power and resource allocation, on
institutional frameworks, or on persistent norms. These models tend to emphasize respectively
the calculative motives and efforts of political actors, the contextually provided imperatives and
structures of opportunities, and the culturally based cues and precepts of action. But behind
interests and their rational expression, structured inhibitions and inclinations, and mores and
values, are feelings and emotions, including those of identity and belonging, hostility and
distance, hope and fear, and so on. This is to say that underwriting political rationality is always
political emotion. Indeed, rationality and emotion are not necessarily opposed, even though it is
widely held that they are. An actors purposes or goals are always emotionally informed; and it is
only through their emotional involvement that an actors purposes can be executed (Barbalet
1998: 29-61; see also Damasio 1994; Elster 1999; Frank 1988). It should be unexceptionable,
therefore, although it is seldom acknowledged, that a leading function of the state is to legitimate
[particular] affectivities and contain [and differentially encourage] political emotion, as Berezin
recently argued (1999: 9).
An important but neglected element of secret voting, then, is how it generates a structure
of politically efficacious emotions different from those sponsored by open voting. In particular,
whereas the emotional pattern associated with open voting might under certain circumstances
include fear of intimidation it more generally includes transitive emotions of group experiences of
identity and loyalty, and collective cohesiveness. How the secret ballots introduction changed
emotional patterns was in fact anticipated by those who introduced the Ballot Act, and also by
contemporary commentators.
The importance of an appreciation of the role of emotions in understanding the passage
of the Ballot Act is not confined to the function of secret voting. There is an important emotional
element in the passage of the Ballot Act, namely elite fear of newly enfranchised working classes.
This is a theme also to be treated in the discussion to follow of the introduction of secret voting in
Britain through the Ballot Act of 1872.

SECRET VOTING AGAINST INTIMIDATION AND CORRUPTION

It was not the intention of remarks above to suggest that electoral corruption was not a
serious problem in Britain during the nineteenth century. Some idea of the extent and
routinization of corruption can be grasped from Hanhams remarks.

Liberal [Party] agents actually possessed books showing the sums paid out in
bribery as far back as 1807. The price of votes had fallen in 1832, and
Secret Voting and Political Emotions 131

occasionally there was a pure election, but the voters on both sides continued
to expect to be paid for their vote and both parties were organized accordingly.
A Conservative Working Mens Association was even formed specially to
distribute largesse, and one of the Liberal candidates and the brother of another
were directly involved in the distribution of money. (1959: 266)

But electoral corruption did not begin in the nineteenth century, for attempts to control it had been
subject to statute since 1669 (Etzioni-Halevy 1979: 43). When the secret ballot (hereafter referred
to as the ballot) first became a feature of the nineteenth-century radical platform it was advocated
as a further measure against electoral intimidation and bribery. But the ballot bore a clear relation
with other elements of that platform, which, in providing a context for advocacy of the ballot,
reveal the significance of this aspect of electoral reform during the 1830s, when it was first
debated in the House of Commons.
When Jeremy Bentham introduced the idea of the ballot in 1817, it was joined with
universal manhood suffrage, annual parliaments, and equal electoral districts as the bases of good
government (Bentham 1817)a position he continued to adhere to (Bentham 1830). The
relationship between the ballot and universal suffrage is crucial in understanding secret votings
different political functions. George Grote, for instance, who led the move for the ballot within
the Commons in the 1820s and 1830s, did not support manhood suffrage. Indeed, the
philosophical radicals in Parliament during this period were concerned to enact liberal not
democratic legislation. For Grote, and the other parliamentary philosophical radicals, the ballot
was primarily an anti-aristocratic measure (Kinzer 1982: 19-20).
Where there was working-class support for the ballot it was necessarily joined with
advocacy of universal manhood suffrage. The Peoples Charter of 1838, for instance, included
vote by ballot in its six demands for democratic franchise. The Chartists did not support the ballot
in isolation from other aspects of democratic reform. Indeed, without universal manhood suffrage
the ballot was seen as an anti-working class device. The dependence in Chartist politics of the
ballot on universal manhood suffrage meant that in the political climate of the time, the ballot was
dropped from the six points when the Chartists presented their 1848 petition (Kinzer 1982: 33). It
was only after the Second Reform Act that working-class opposition to the ballot abated. Before
1867 the ballot without universal manhood suffrage would only advantage middle-class voters
and remove a means of working-class organizational leverage at elections.
Opposition to corruption and bribery was an ostensible reason for advocating the ballot,
certainly. But in fact the Ballot Act had very little impact on corruption for a number of reasons.
Tenant farmers who were enfranchised by the 1867 reforms (although farm laborers were not)
found the 1872 Act to have little immediate benefit, if for no other reason that in close-knit rural
communities the abandonment of open voting did little to protect confidentiality of political
affiliation and electoral behavior (Alderman 1986: 117). In practice, the rural vote was not secret
even after the Ballot Act. Voters names were often recorded by estate mangers or agents on
behalf of landlords. As the ballot boxes were separately counted it was not difficult to ascertain
how the votes were cast (Pugh 1982: 10).
A contemporary objection to the Ballot Act, in fact, was that it facilitated rather than
limited corruption by allowing electors to take bribes from more than one party. Much
contemporary concern was expressed regarding the excessive level of expenditure during the
1868, 1874, and 1880 elections, which was understood to be at least partly the result of payments
for votes. This concern was translated into support for the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of
1883 (Pugh 1982: 11). This Act was primarily to curb excessive election expenditure in smaller
boroughs. It was no more effective than the Ballot Act, however, in ending corruption, which
continued to be a matter of concern into the twentieth century (Alderman 1986: 118-20; Hanham
1959: 281-3).
To the degree that it was thought that the ballot would brake electoral corruption it was
supported by working-class leaders after 1867 on the grounds that such an outcome would reduce
132 Mobilization

the cost of elections and thus permit, even encourage, the candidacy of persons of moderate
means (Hayes 1982: 19; Kinzer 1982: 93). The connection between the cost of elections and
corruption is real indeed. But the efficacious relationship is not necessarily between corruption
and the ballot, but rather the size of the electorate, or more appropriately, the constituencya
point acknowledged in the Report of the Select Committee on Parliamentary and Municipal
Elections (Select Committee 1870: 16). The cost effectiveness of bribery diminishes as the
numbers of voters in a constituency increases (Finn 1977: 197).
The relationship between secret voting and decline in electoral corruption is not strong.
It is true that after the general election of 1874 only 22 petitions were brought to trial compared
with 74 in the 1868 election. OLeary (1962: 92) attributes this decrease, however, not to
improved electioneering morals resulting from the Ballot Act, but to the increase in petition
expenses that resulted from the use of election lawyers. He goes on to observe that after the next
general election in 1880 the number of petitions increased. There are many possible grounds for
supporting the ballot apart from opposition to corrupt electoral practices. Additionally, the ballot
has not been particularly effective in opposing electoral corruption. Neither the background nor
function of secret voting, then, is best conceived in terms of opposition to electoral corruption.

SECRET VOTING AGAINST WORKING-CLASS ORGANIZATION

In practically every instance of secret votings introduction in Europe during the nineteenth
century, it preceded or was coterminous with manhood suffrage. This suggests that secret voting
served as a means of muting the impact of working-class voters on liberal regimes. In Britain
also, the ballot preceded manhood suffrage. The Second Reform Act of 1867 enfranchised less
than thirty percent of the male, adult, urban working class (Moorhouse 1973: 345). The Third
Reform Act of 1884-5 increased the electorate so that two in three men in England and Wales and
three in five in Scotland were qualified to vote (Smith 1971: 12-13). It was not until the 1918
Representation of the People Act that manhood suffrage was complete (Barbalet 1988: 84-5). The
Ballot Act thus appears five years after the beginnings of working-class incorporation and thirty-
six years before its completion.
The perspective suggested here, in which the ballot is a means of limiting the working
classs impact at a time when its numerical electoral capacities were enhanced, shifts focus away
from viewing secret voting in terms of how it limits electoral corruption and therefore protects
working men against landlords and employers. The approach indicated here points instead to the
way in which secret voting isolates members of the same class from each other.
Bendix (1964: 100) held that it was the need to neutralize the threatening working-class
organizations that was the decisive factor in the advent of the ballot in nineteenth-century
Europe. This argument, that the secret vote was a means of reducing the influence of working-
class organizations on working-class voters, appeared as an important element in discourse about
the ballot among Liberal and radical parliamentarians in England during the 1860s, when
increasing (though still limited) numbers of working men had the right to vote.
In support of a motion on the ballot in the House of Commons in July 1867, a Liberal
member, Bernal Osborne, offered the following remarks in his speech:

He was not going to urge the old stock argument of the poor man being
oppressed by the rich, or poor shopkeepers exclusively dealt with by the rich,
according as they voted. That argument had had its day; but there was a very
important argument to be derived from the disclosures lately made in regard to
trade unions, as to the position the poor voter was in from the tyranny that
might be exercised upon him by his own class ... it was not only the rich who
were powerful to command votes, but the poorer classes associated together
had a strong power in their hands to exercise upon those who went against
their opinions. Give them the protection of secret voting, whereby they
Secret Voting and Political Emotions 133

would be able to record their honest opinion without being subjected to the
pressure of people in their own station of life (Hansard quoted in Kinzer
1982: 91-92).

It cannot be assumed from this that the argument concerning the imperiousness of employers was
no longer heard, or that sentiments against working-class organizations amongst
parliamentarians, from both sides, led them to support the ballot. The ballot was not a popular
issue during this period, and no motion in the House of Commons supporting it gained a majority
during the 1860s. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that the degree to which there was
Liberal support for the ballot from this time was not simply against aristocratic powers, but also
against working-class organization.
The period from the mid-1860s witnessed profound changes in the public standing and
appreciation of trade unions. A new concern about unions was given broad public expression in
1864, when there began a concerted campaign by unions for the amendment of the Master and
Servant Acts (Cole 1948: 197). In 1866 the so-called Sheffield Outrages added to the public
hostility toward unions. In these events craft-organized men were involved in the intimidation of
non-society men, including the explosive destruction of a domestic dwelling. The outcry against
trade unionism that arose from these acts included demands for the penal suppression of
unionism. Early in 1867 the government set up a royal commission to enquire and report on the
organization and rules of trades and other associations, with power to investigate any recent acts
of intimidation, outrage, or wrong alleged to have promoted, encouraged or connived at by such
Trade Unions or other association (quoted in Cole 1948: 201).
A perception of union intimidation of working men thus became a part of the
respectable and established representation of the operations of working-class organization. In
fact, of course, this image reflects a genuine and constant aspect of working-class organization in
the maintenance of the solidarity required for its effectiveness (Olson 1965: 66-76). Indeed,
working class organization is an effective counter to and defense against electoral blackmail of
employees by employers (Brennan and Pettit 1990: 330-1). The general election of 1868 was the
first after the Second Reform Act of 1867, and therefore was the first in which increased numbers
of working men were able to vote. Protective legislation for trade unions was one of the issues
around which much organized working-class activity was focussed, and at the open hustings
vigorous encouragement of working-class voters by working-class organizers was far from a rare
event.
Unions were given legal protection with the Labor Laws of 1871 (Cole 1948: 206). But
the public perception of the arrogance of unions was institutionalized in the Criminal Law
Amendment Act of 1871, which contained clauses against the use by unions of all forms of
molestation, obstruction, or intimidation (Cole 1948: 206). While the enactment of this
legislation was not seen by proponents or commentators to be in concert with the passage of the
Ballot Act in the following year, the provisions of the Ballot Act for secrecy of the vote enhanced
the legal sanctions against improper influence by working-class organizations of working-class
voters that it introduced. The move from open to secret voting provided by the 1872 legislation
served to make even more difficult any influence at all of working-class organizations on
working-class voters.

SECRET VOTING AS CROWD MANAGEMENT

There was another advantage attached to secret voting frequently referred to in

discussion of the 1860s and later, but not taken up in more recent accounts. This was the way in
which secret voting would reduce the costs and civic disorder of elections, which grew
enormously during the 1868 General Election, in which several thousand new voters registered.
Nominations at the hustings, open hustings, treating (the provision of food, drink or entertainment
in order to influence the vote), declaration of the poll, and other aspects of open voting generated
134 Mobilization

carnivalesque if not riotous gatherings. So concerned was the Liberal government about election
procedures that it appointed a Select Committee on Parliamentary and Municipal Elections to
investigate the prevalence of improper practices at elections held during the previous forty years.
The final report of the committee was published in March 1870. The report is in four parts; a set
of recommendations, verbatim transcripts of evidence given by witnesses at committee hearings,
an index, and the report itself. On the basis of evidence the committee recommended adoption of
the secret ballot.
The Select Committee discussed four types of misconduct apart from riots; namely
bribery, intimidation, personation (voting under anothers name), and treating. It is the last of
these that most readily contributed to the formation of crowds, leading to electoral disorder and
riots. The incidence of these different types of misconduct is not quantified in the report, but the
frequency with which treating occurred can be gauged from the fact that the index entry for it is
as large as it is for bribery, followed in descending order by the entries for intimidation and
personation. In Wales, for instance, treating and drinking were extensive, and these practices
were reported to sometimes result in riots (Select Committee 1870: 102, 201). In Cardiff,
according to the evidence of Colonel Edward Hill, a Liberal mob was organized on nomination
day of the 1868 general election that intimidated and seriously assaulted supporters of the
Conservative candidate, leading many of them to refrain from voting (1870: 19, 181-2). The
connection between treating and mob violence was again reported by another witness, Major
Robert Bush of Bristol, and involving both sides of politics (1870: 17,167-8). Elections in
Blackburn were also marked by serious intimidation and by extensive rioting (1870: 12, 131-2).
Chippenham was another constituency in which treating and extensive violence were reported
(1870: 23). Electoral violence was also extensive in Ireland, where troops were regularly used in
elections (1870: 29, 43-4, 52).
Within the time frame of the Select Committees sitting a test-ballot Liberal primary
was held in Manchester in January 1869. The report in The Times, a paper hostile to the ballot,
was clearly impressed with how orderly things were: 18,500 voters went through without a single
crowd forming, and without any show of public excitement! (quoted in Kinzer 1982: 106-107).
The Select Committee was also impressed. It reported the general satisfaction which the test
ballot attracted and listed a number of the ballots positive features, which included rare
instances of irregularity in voting, absence of undue influence, and [g]reat ease and rapidity
of the polling as compared with the ordinary system (Select Committee 1870: 59). It was also
mentioned that there was an [e]ntire absence of objection to the working of the system on the
part of the Conservatives. This may have been a result of the large number (32.5%) of Liberal
electors who abstained from voting, the majority of whom were of the lower class [rather]
than of the more respectable class (1870: 59). In any event, the value of the Manchester test
ballot as a demonstration of the crowd-control effect of secret voting was clear in all of this.
The real test of the effectiveness of the ballot in contributing to public order was the
conduct of subsequent elections. The first general election after the passage of the Ballot Act was
held in 1874, in which the secret ballot was used for the first time in a Parliamentary election.
This election was by no means free of violence. Under the heading Election Riots, The Times
of February 5 and 6, 1874 (The Times 1874a: 9: The Times 1874b: 9) published accounts of
incidents throughout the country where riots had broken out during the course of the election.
Riots were reported from fifteen separate locations. The majority of incidents included window
breaking; personal injury was reported in seven places, including one death; and looting was also
reported to have occurred in one town.
Against the impression that such accounts might create, on February 6, 1874 The Times,
under the heading The General Election gave rather more space to improvements brought by
the Ballot Act in the conduct of the election (The Times 1874c: 6-7). The focus here was the ease
and quiet with which large numbers of people went through the polling booths. Referring to the
fact that 14,000 people voted in London, The Times reported that the arrangements for taking the
poll were very simple, and, to all appearance, satisfactory, and the business throughout the day
Secret Voting and Political Emotions 135

went on like clockwork (The Times 1874c: 6). There are frequent references to how the most
complete quiet and order prevailed during polling day, that there was little external excitement
with internal privacy, and that polling has not been very spirited in any of the stations (The
Times 1874c: 6). These reports testify to the way in which the ballot, from its inception, brought
order and reserve to what had been a tumultuous, even chaotic, event.

SECRET VOTING AND RULING CLASS FEAR

Discussion to this point has shown that far from removing electoral corruption, the
Ballot Act of 1872 is better explained by its effects on working-class organization and crowd
control. Indeed, all electoral reform during this period can be understood in terms of ruling class
management of rising working-class aspirations and organization. The dilemma facing the
nineteenth-century European ruling classes was that the mobilization of the masses, which was
destructive of established order, could be contained only by extending to them formal political
participation. Yet this enlargement of the political community threatened the very institutions that
supported ruling-class privilege. Thus the predominant affective complexion of nineteenth-
century political elites was fear: fear of emergent working-class power and fear of loss of class
privilege.
Ruling class fear was in part based on the perception of fundamental differences
between the ruling class and the masses. It was held that while the opinions and actions of the
former were governed by reason, the masses were driven by uneducated passion or emotion.
Thus the fear of the one was explained by the emotionality of the other, a pattern of thought that
extends into the twentieth century in the work of liberal writers, including Sigmund Freud, Karl
Mannheim, and William Kornhauser. The nineteenth-century ruling class removed the source of
its fear by extending the franchise in a manner that, among other things, suppressed and rendered
politically irrelevant working-class emotionality. Indeed, this was the principal result of
introducing secret voting, an institution largely ignored in historical, political, and sociological
accounts, but crucial for an understanding of modern politics, and the modern constitution of
emotionality.
Historians of nineteenth-century England have studied in detail the formation of the
working class and its relationship with the middle class, Methodism, trade unionism, Chartism,
and so on. But the crucial topic of ruling-class reactions to what was then a new and rapidly
growing social and political force has been treated only peripherally. Nevertheless, contemporary
documents make ample reference to how the emerging working class was regarded. One such
document is Walter Bagehots Introduction to the Second Edition of his classic text, The
English Constitution. The second edition of this work was published in 1872, and includes a
projection of the consequences of the Second Reform Bill of 1867, brought down just after The
English Constitution was first written. In the Introduction to the Second Edition Bagehot warns
of the dangers inherent in giving the vote to workers who are not only propertyless but also prone
to excitement and emotion. It is this that Bagehot fears for himself and the class he addresses.
Bagehot (1872 [1964]: 281) was unrestrained in his expression of feeling about the new
political agenda when he declared that I am exceedingly afraid of the ignorant multitude of the
new constituencies. The ignorant multitude is a source of fear on a number of grounds. Most
superficially Bagehot feared that in seeking the vote of the newly enfranchised worker, existing
political parties would compete to satisfy his ignorant desires (Bagehot 1872 [1964]: 277). This is
a fear that the quality of politics would be changed by the working-class vote. Of more concern,
though, was that the working class would combine to form a solid political block. Bagehot does
not treat this in terms of a working-class political interest but in terms of the possible realization
in the political system of ignorance:

a political combination of the lower classes, as such and for their own objects,
is an evil of the first magnitude; that a permanent combination of them would
136 Mobilization

make them (now that so many of them have the suffrage) supreme in the
country; and that their supremacy, in the state they now are, means the
supremacy of ignorance over instruction and of numbers over knowledge
(Bagehot 1872 [1964]: 277).

The solution to this problem, which Bagehot immediately goes on to indicate, is to prevent the
working class acting together, a thing which will require the greatest wisdom and the greatest
foresight in the higher classes.
The supremacy of ignorance Bagehot fears is not merely an absence of knowledge so
much as an opposition to reason, and an opposition to reason that is itself a force of emotion and
passion. This is a further aspect, and the most crucial, of Bagehots representative fear of the
working class, namely its emotionality. He declared that democratic passions gain by fomenting
a diffused excitement, and by massing men in concourses, which means a real danger of a wild
excitement among the ignorant poor, which, if once roused, may not be easily calmed (Bagehot
1872 [1964]: 282). Thus Baghot directly links open voting with destructive passions. The solution
to this problem is obvious and clear: disaggregate the mass politically, and thereby dissolve its
emotionality. This can be achieved by electorally isolating voters from each othera key
function of secret voting.
The attitudes and feelings described here were not unique to Bagehot. His clear
expression of fear of working-class emotionality testifies to a significant feeling current in
nineteenth-century European political elites. Indeed, fear of the masses is the constitutive
emotional basis of a large reactionary literature that began in response to the French Revolution,
and included, for instance, the work of Edmund Burke in England and Hippolyte Taine in France.
This literature and its pattern of feelings are crystallized in Le Bons The Crowd (1895), a work
that emphasizes the necessary emotionality of groups and crowds.
But it was not only reactionary and conservative writers who feared working-class
emotionality. The progressive liberal reformer and champion of suffrage extension, J.S. Mill
(1861 [1960]: 283), agreed that while everyone ought to have a voice the idea that everyone
should have an equal voice is a totally different proposition. This statement occurs in a
discussion in which Mill expressed an interest in the education of the intelligence and of the
sentiments of the lowest ranks of the people (1861 [1960]: 277). Following Tocqueville, he
asserted that democracy would increase both intelligence and patriotism. The significance of the
latter is in its capacity to educate sentiment or emotion, for those who experienced patriotic
feelings would be integrated into the national political community (1861 [1960]: 277-78). Mill
(1861 [1960]: 283) defended plural voting based on occupation and education on the grounds that
it would overcome the dangers of a situation in which the majority of voters are manual laborers.
Mills arguments are particularly interesting in this context because from the late 1850s
he moved from being a supporter of the ballot to opposing it. Mill moved away from radical
advocacy of the ballot to opposition to it because he believed that changes had occurred by this
time that rendered his earlier stance inappropriate. These included the breaking of aristocratic
rule, the political rise of the lower classes, and a decline in electoral corruption and bribery (Mill
1861 [1960]: 302-3). The correctness or otherwise of these opinions is less important than Mills
opposition to the ballot on the grounds that it construes the vote as a private and personal act
subject to individual prerogative (1861 [1960]: 298-300). In particular, Mill held that the vote was
not a right, and therefore not an individual possession, but a trust for the public. As a public duty,
voting should be performed under the eye and criticism of the public (1861 [1960]: 300).
Public voting, Mill continues, leads the voter to have sure grounds of their own because it is
performed under the scrutiny of others (1861 [1960]: 305). He goes on to say:

People will give dishonest or mean votes from lucre, from malice, from pique,
from personal rivalry, even from the interests or prejudices of class or sect,
more readily in secret than in public (1861 [1960]: 306).
Secret Voting and Political Emotions 137

Thus Mills argument, like Bagehots, hinges on the fact that secret voting separates or cuts off
electors from their relationship of duty to the community. Their different attitudes to the ballot do
not arise from different assessments of the nature of the working class, but from the fact that Mill
but not Bagehot believed that sufficient defense against working-class emotionality could be
found in patriotism sponsored by democracy and plural voting. Additionally, Mill valued the
educative potential of voting as a public responsibility, which, according to him, can only be
achieved with open not secret voting.

SECRET VOTING AND THE SUPPRESSION OF POLITICAL EMOTION

In isolating working-class voters from not only their class organizations, but from each
other, the ballot neutralized both the threat of working-class electoral solidarity and the formation
of working-class crowds. In each of these the individuating and isolating function of the secret
ballot is manifest, a point highlighted by Rokkan (1961 [1966]: 117) when he says that:

[In] secret voting the individual adult is cut off from all his roles in the
subordinate systems of the household, the neighborhood, the work
organization, the church and the civil association and set to act exclusively in
the abstract role of a citizen of the overall political system: there will be no
feedback for what he does in this anonymous role to what he does in the other
roles.

In this account, secret voting can be understood as an aspect of a process of political

rationalization, in which patterns of organizational networks and institutional bonds are broken
into their constituent elements and these distinct parts separated and isolated from one another.
The individual voter thus avoids sanctions from those who wish to illegitimately influence their
vote, but at the same time there is an inhibition on the relational sharing of political
communication and responsibility of electoral participation. Indeed, with secret voting political
parties achieve a monopoly of legitimate access to and influence on voters (Brennen and Pettit
1990: 332). In this sense a secret vote can be described as an insular, limited, private, and
possibly futile ritual that guarantees the creation of a unit citizen, acting in abstraction from
societal roles and leaving intact the structure of political power.
To describe the advent of the ballot as part of a process of political rationalization is not
to suggest the expulsion of emotion from politics. Rather, rationalization eradicates a particular
set of emotional patterns from political life and replaces it with another set. To put the matter this
way raises questions not adequately treated in previous accounts. Indeed, Rokkans description
above, while insightful of the structural change brought about by the ballot, makes no reference to
the mechanisms that alienate the voter from non-electoral roles. These mechanisms are the
emotional transformations that underlie the organizational changes he refers to. It is typically
assumed that rationalization includes an elimination of emotion, not the generation of a particular
set of emotions commensurate with it. In fact, though, emotions cannot be eliminated from social
processes, and even rational activity has a necessary basis in particular emotions (Barbalet 1998).
What is important, then, is to show which emotions operate under conditions of open voting, and
which emotions operate under conditions of secret voting.
Secret voting or voting by ballot is the norm in modern electoral systems. It is part of an
organization of political practices in which voting is seen as an instrumental act, expressive of an
interest and registering a preference for one candidate, or policy, over another. This is its
rationale. A cognitive consequence of this rationale is an awareness on the part of the voter that
no single vote can determine an electoral outcome and therefore that the voters individual
preference cannot in itself be politically effective, let alone decisive. That electoral choices are
seldom between different policies but unreliable and promise-breaking politicians simply
exacerbates this situation (Lindblom 1977: 146, 150-1). The affective or emotional dimensions of
138 Mobilization

the ballot must include, then, a feeling of impotence and loneliness. Indeed, the emotional pattern
of political rationalization in the practice of voting is the same as that of religious rationalization,
classically captured by Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905 [1991]),
especially the feeling of inner loneliness and the subsequent feeling of distrusting others (1905
[1991]: 104, 107).
These consequences of voting by ballot have not been highlighted in the relevant
literature because the concern there is never with the population of individual voters but the
population of elections, as a leading pioneer researcher in the field has put it (Key 1960: 54
quoted in Natchez 1985: 186). Indeed, voting studies typically examine the behavior of electors,
and the relationship between their social background and party preference or allegiance. While
familial influences on voting behavior has long been established, the difficulty in attaining high
voter turnout for all polities, which rely on elections as a legitimating mechanism, suggests not
voter sociality but indifference and alienation from the electoral process, and elector impuissance.
The feelings of loneliness and impotence inherent in secret voting are associated with
if not symptomatic ofthe emotions of depression and shame. These result respectively from
loss of regard or standing (Kemper 1978: 225-36) and loss of self-efficacy (Scheff 1990: 71-5),
which loneliness and impotence describe. It is not being suggested that people who vote are
themselves necessarily depressed and ashamed, but that these are the emotional patterns that
emerge from the institution of the ballot. In the act of secret voting depression and shame are
implicit, and the actions of voters tend to reflect the fact.
The behavioral consequences of depression and shame are withdrawal, and it is
therefore possible to understand major components of the syndrome of modern politics in terms
of the emotional pattern established by the institutionalization of the ballot. In particular, voter
apathy, cynicism, low registration and turnout, are each predicted in terms of the emotional
pattern implicit in the ballot. This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that studies
typically account for these things in terms of ideological convergence of political parties, the
behavior of politicians, and other external features of the system (Himmelstrand 1970; Piven and
Cloward 1988), not the structurally contextualized emotions of voters. Presented here, on the
other hand, is an approach that indicates the inherent susceptibility to political alienation in the
emotional pattern associated with the ballot itself.
An obvious difference between the ballot and open voting is that whereas the former is
non-interactive the latter encourages interaction. This is not a superficial difference but indicates
that voting under open conditions may be consumatory, to use Deweys term, as opposed to
instrumental. Mill, as we saw, proposed the thesis that voting performed under the eye and
criticism of the public (1861 [1960]: 300) leads the voter to be surer of their grounds (1861
[1960]: 305). While this latter requirement might mean, as Mill no doubt meant it, that the open
voters decision will be based on evidence and argument, sociologically it would mean that the
open voters decision would be taken to avoid social rejection, or, to say the same thing
positively, to lead to social acceptance. These two possible meanings of Mills thesis are not
opposed: The desire for social acceptance will ensure that the discursive preference for voting in
a defensible manner will be given great prominence (Brennan and Pettit 1990: 326).
As a consumatory and interactive activity open voting carries its own emotional pattern.
A key element of this pattern is trust, the feeling that one can be dependent on others (Barbalet
1996). Dependencys illegitimate side is corruption and blackmail. But these are not inherent in
open voting, and their likelihood diminishes as the size of electorates increases, as noted above.
Associated with trust are feelings of duty and belonging. These are essential in organizational
growth and operations, as is embarrassment (Goffman 1967: 97-112). Embarrassment facilitates
interaction by allowing those who perform unacceptably to indicate remorsethereby signaling
their continuing suitability for social acceptance.
The different emotional patterns associated respectively with open and secret voting
thus imply different types of politics. The ballot, then, cannot be regarded as a minor aspect of
political organization, but a central core of the political system. The introduction of secret voting,
Secret Voting and Political Emotions 139

therefore, brings profound changes to a political regime. This is largely because of the contrasting
emotional patterns such changes sponsor.

CONCLUSION

The advent of the ballot raises a number of questions. Those relating to democratic theory and
practice have only been tangentially touched upon here. The sociological focus of preceding
discussion has been directed instead to the linkage between institutions and emotions. Discussion
of the British Ballot Act of 1872 has shown that the most proximate concern proponents hoped
the Ballot Act would remedy was the control of electoral crowds and the elimination of electoral
mob violence. While secret voting was largely successful in separating working-class voters from
working-class organizations and in managing electoral gatherings, it has historically been less
successful in eliminating electoral corruption.
The mechanisms behind both the support for and consequences of the ballot have been
shown to be socially based and politically effective emotions. It was ruling-class fear of emergent
working-class political force and pressure in the latters threat to transform the political system
that led to the containment strategy of legislative reform of election procedures. Thus the Ballot
Act can be described as a single instance of a widely used but largely ignored process of
containment, in which elite fear leads to organizational and political change through endeavors to
contain the source of fear (see Barbalet 1998: 149-69). The consequences of secret voting were
also shown to be significantly emotional. The different emotional patterns associated with open
and secret voting have enormous consequences that are not confined to the electoral act itself but
affect the entire structure of the political system and its operation.
The idea that political rationalization entails a reduction of the incidence or influence of
emotion has been challenged in the present paper. It has also been shown that it is not adequate to
refer to the effects of emotion in general but always necessary to treat the particular emotions
implicit in institutions, such as the ballot. This is because the different impact of open and secret
voting respectively is precisely in the distinct pattern of the particular emotions with which each
is associated. Emotions are therefore not incidental and unimportant aspects of politics, but a
dimension of political process and structure deserving of the closest attention.

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