ballot box

noun

1

: a box for receiving ballots

2

: ballot sense 2a

Phrases

stuff the ballot box

chiefly US

: to attempt to control the outcome of an election by having multiple illegitimate votes cast in support of the desired candidate

They said the vote-rigging included stuffing ballot boxes, buying votes and absent names on the voter rolls.

—Sonia Verma

By a margin of just 277 votes (some say ballot boxes were stuffed), Brooklyn, the nation's fourth-largest city, had voted to give up its proud and independent history.

—James Sterngold

Examples of ballot box in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Even though the election was over a month ago, voters in some parts of the country are discovering that having their say at the ballot box is not necessarily the final word. —Gary Fields, Los Angeles Times, 8 Dec. 2024

Although Democrats like Harris had no issue raising money this year, record-breaking fundraising didn't translate to success at the ballot box. —Mark R. Weaver, Newsweek, 4 Dec. 2024

Playground In Look Away, Jacob Kushner draws a disturbing portrait of the white supremacist subculture that took hold across eastern Germany in the 1990s and now is making gains at the ballot box. —The New York Review of Books, 29 Nov. 2024

But the movement has also seen significant losses at the state level, particularly at the ballot box. —Lexi Lonas Cochran, The Hill, 27 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1677, in the meaning defined at sense 1