That's a very good question, for instance for most of its republican period Rome did not have secret ballot, and voting was open. That have changed in 138BC htt

That's a very good question, for instance for most of its republican period Rome did not have secret ballot, and voting was open. That have changed in 138BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_laws_of_the_Roman_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_laws_of_the_Roman_Repub... and have caused major instability, political violence and eventually demise of the republic. The issue was that the poor people could vote for Gracchi brothers, but were too afraid to protect them, and one without the other only have brought to a worse outcome where they could not vote at all. Even today if you are afraid of saying openly what policies or which politician you support, how can you hope to enact these policies? Secret ballot started being introduced in US starting from 1888 and it did not bring any of positive changes that its supporters thought that it would. In places where a group can intimidate majority of voters and force to vote one way, secret ballot does not help at all because that group can also fake the results. It even makes situation worse, by hiding the actual data from opposition.