Election security has always been a challenge in the American democratic process, but voter privacy wasn't always a concern.
According to Time Magazine, historian Gil Troy says that before the Revolutionary War, colonists cast their votes by voice, not by ballots.
In fact, voting took place at local carnivals. There, people—who may or may not have been drunk at the time—would call out their votes to be counted.
Given the public nature of the process, not to mention how drunk the voters might be at the time, voting was very easily corruptible.
It wasn't until 1892 that voting with paper ballots, and protecting the voter's privacy, became the generally accepted standard for holding fair elections.
