Fluency U5L4

Voting is a simple but important idea. People vote,

their votes are counted, and the person or idea with

the most votes wins.

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

winner is declared.

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

wrong candidate.