ballot box

noun

1
: a box for receiving ballots
2
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
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But there have already been reports that these watermarks can be erased, and that Sora 2 has generated fake scenes of a man stuffing a ballot box or of people committing non-existent crimes. Miami Herald, 10 Oct. 2025 Machado had been poised to challenge him at the ballot box. Barney Henderson, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 Oct. 2025 But those competitive races still aren't expected to draw masses to the ballot box. Hannah Pinski, Louisville Courier Journal, 9 Oct. 2025 Half a world away, in the United States, political life, as expressed on college campuses, in street protests, and at the ballot box, would be upended and reordered in ways that will reverberate for years to come. Ian Crouch, New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2025 See All Example Sentences for ballot box

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1677, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of ballot box was circa 1677

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Cite this Entry

“Ballot box.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ballot%20box. Accessed 21 Oct. 2025.

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