Voting is a simple but important idea. People vote,
their votes are counted, and the person or idea with
Today, most people go to a polling place to cast their
vote. This is often a public building like a school or fire
station. There are machines in the building that allow
people to vote in private. They go into a voting booth and
pull a curtain behind them. They use a machine to vote,
and when they have finished, their vote is recorded. All
the votes are added up at the end of the day and a
You might hear the phrase ballot box to describe voting.
That term comes from a way of voting from many years
ago. There was a box, and people voted by putting little
balls in the box. The word ballot comes from the old
Italian word ballotta, meaning little ball.
The ancient Greeks invented democracy and voting.
The way they voted was not complicated at all. People
put pebbles in a basket. This method and ones like it are
still in use today. It works fine, as long as there are not
too many people voting in the same place.
For voting to work, it must be simple and
understandable. That can be harder than it seems. In a
recent election in the United States, people used punch
cards. These are cards where you vote by pushing a
little piece of paper out of the card. The system was so
confusing that some people may have voted for the