Americans used to vote with their voices—,begin italics,viva voce,end italics,—or with their hands or, literally, with their feet. Yea or nay. Speak up. Raise your hand. All in favor of Jones, stand on this side of Town Hall; if you support Smith, line up over there. Every town, county, and colony, and later, every state, determined its own method of voting (although nearly everyone agreed that Election Day ought to involve plenty of stumping,superscript,1,baseline, . . .). In the colonies, as in the mother country, casting a vote only very rarely required paper and pen. The word "ballot" comes from the Italian ,begin italics,ballota,end italics,, or ball, and in the 1600s, a ballot usually was a ball, or at least something ball-ish, like a pea or a pebble, or, not uncommonly, a bullet. Colonial Pennsylvanians voted by tossing beans into a hat. Everyone knew how everyone else voted. Paper voting, when it started, wasn't meant to conceal anyone's vote; it was just easier than counting beans. Our forebears considered casting a "secret ballot" cowardly, underhanded, and despicable; as one South Carolinian put it, voting secretly would "destroy that noble generous openness that is characteristick of an Englishman."%0D%0A%0D%0Aparagraph 2,The first recorded colonial use of paper voting comes from Salem, Massachusetts: in 1629, church members elected their pastor by writing his name down on slivers of parchment. In 1634, John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, was elected "by paper"; thirteen years later, a Bay Colony law dictated voting "by wrighting the names of the persons Elected." Outside of Massachusetts, which had an unusually high literacy rate, this would have been entirely impractical. Only very slowly did voting by paper grow common enough that the word "ballot" came to mean not a ball but a piece of paper. Well after American Independence, most elections remained the stuff of corn and beans and hands and feet.%0D%0A%0D%0Aparagraph 3,The Constitution, drafted in 1787, left the conduct of elections up to the states: "The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations." Further than this limited federal oversight the framers would not go. And even this needed Madison's insistence, during the Constitutional Convention, that "it was impossible to foresee all the abuses" that states might make of unimpeded power over the conduct of elections.%0D%0A%0D%0Aparagraph 4,The Constitution makes no provision for how Americans should vote not only because the men who wrote it wanted to leave such matters (mostly) to the states, but also because, as only Madison glimpsed, they could not possibly have foreseen how unwieldy elections would very soon become. With the exception of Benjamin Franklin . . . the nation's founders could scarcely have imagined that the population of the United States, less than four million in 1790, would increase tenfold by 1870. Nor did they prophesy the party system. Above all, they could not have fathomed universal suffrage, which entirely defied eighteenth-century political philosophy. The framers expected only a tiny minority to vote, and these men didn't elect George Washington; they voted only for delegates to the Electoral College, an institution established to further restrain the popular will. (The original proposal, at the Constitutional Convention, was for the president to be elected by Congress, called, in the debates, the "national legislature." A motion "to strike out 'National Legislature' & insert 'citizens of U.S.'" was defeated, twelve states to one. That the people, even given limited suffrage, would elect the president directly was almost inconceivable. The election of the president by Congress, however, violated the separation of powers. The Electoral College, proposed after the defeat of the motion for direct election, was an ill-begotten compromise.)%0D%0A%0D%0Aparagraph 5,The states, left to their own, adopted electoral methods best described as higgledy-piggledy.,superscript,2,baseline, The constitutions of five of the original states mentioned voting by ballot. "An opinion hath long prevailed among diverse good people of this state," wrote the framers of New York's 1777 constitution, "that voting at elections by ballot would tend more to preserve the liberty and freedom of the people than voting ,begin italics,viva voce,end italics,"; they proposed a "fair experiment" with the paper ballot. In 1799, Maryland became the first state to require paper voting in all statewide elections. The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, mandated that members of the Electoral College "vote by ballot." By no means, however, did paper voting become universal. The citizens of Kentucky voted ,begin italics,viva voce,end italics, until 1891

Question

Americans used to vote with their voices—,begin italics,viva voce,end italics,—or with their hands or, literally, with their feet. Yea or nay. Speak up. Raise your hand. All in favor of Jones, stand on this side of Town Hall; if you support Smith, line up over there. Every town, county, and colony, and later, every state, determined its own method of voting (although nearly everyone agreed that Election Day ought to involve plenty of stumping,superscript,1,baseline, . . .). In the colonies, as in the mother country, casting a vote only very rarely required paper and pen. The word "ballot" comes from the Italian ,begin italics,ballota,end italics,, or ball, and in the 1600s, a ballot usually was a ball, or at least something ball-ish, like a pea or a pebble, or, not uncommonly, a bullet. Colonial Pennsylvanians voted by tossing beans into a hat. Everyone knew how everyone else voted. Paper voting, when it started, wasn't meant to conceal anyone's vote; it was just easier than counting beans. Our forebears considered casting a "secret ballot" cowardly, underhanded, and despicable; as one South Carolinian put it, voting secretly would "destroy that noble generous openness that is characteristick of an Englishman."%0D%0A%0D%0Aparagraph 2,The first recorded colonial use of paper voting comes from Salem, Massachusetts: in 1629, church members elected their pastor by writing his name down on slivers of parchment. In 1634, John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, was elected "by paper"; thirteen years later, a Bay Colony law dictated voting "by wrighting the names of the persons Elected." Outside of Massachusetts, which had an unusually high literacy rate, this would have been entirely impractical. Only very slowly did voting by paper grow common enough that the word "ballot" came to mean not a ball but a piece of paper. Well after American Independence, most elections remained the stuff of corn and beans and hands and feet.%0D%0A%0D%0Aparagraph 3,The Constitution, drafted in 1787, left the conduct of elections up to the states: "The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations." Further than this limited federal oversight the framers would not go. And even this needed Madison's insistence, during the Constitutional Convention, that "it was impossible to foresee all the abuses" that states might make of unimpeded power over the conduct of elections.%0D%0A%0D%0Aparagraph 4,The Constitution makes no provision for how Americans should vote not only because the men who wrote it wanted to leave such matters (mostly) to the states, but also because, as only Madison glimpsed, they could not possibly have foreseen how unwieldy elections would very soon become. With the exception of Benjamin Franklin . . . the nation's founders could scarcely have imagined that the population of the United States, less than four million in 1790, would increase tenfold by 1870. Nor did they prophesy the party system. Above all, they could not have fathomed universal suffrage, which entirely defied eighteenth-century political philosophy. The framers expected only a tiny minority to vote, and these men didn't elect George Washington; they voted only for delegates to the Electoral College, an institution established to further restrain the popular will. (The original proposal, at the Constitutional Convention, was for the president to be elected by Congress, called, in the debates, the "national legislature." A motion "to strike out 'National Legislature' & insert 'citizens of U.S.'" was defeated, twelve states to one. That the people, even given limited suffrage, would elect the president directly was almost inconceivable. The election of the president by Congress, however, violated the separation of powers. The Electoral College, proposed after the defeat of the motion for direct election, was an ill-begotten compromise.)%0D%0A%0D%0Aparagraph 5,The states, left to their own, adopted electoral methods best described as higgledy-piggledy.,superscript,2,baseline, The constitutions of five of the original states mentioned voting by ballot. "An opinion hath long prevailed among diverse good people of this state," wrote the framers of New York's 1777 constitution, "that voting at elections by ballot would tend more to preserve the liberty and freedom of the people than voting ,begin italics,viva voce,end italics,"; they proposed a "fair experiment" with the paper ballot. In 1799, Maryland became the first state to require paper voting in all statewide elections. The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, mandated that members of the Electoral College "vote by ballot." By no means, however, did paper voting become universal. The citizens of Kentucky voted ,begin italics,viva voce,end italics, until 1891

How does paragraph 5 build on an idea that is stated in paragraph 2?

Paragraph 5 explains why the "first recorded colonial use" of paper voting was in the north.

Paragraph 5 clarifies the connection between a "high literacy rate" and paper voting.

Paragraph 5 gives details to show that paper voting became common only "very slowly."

Paragraph 5 shows precisely when a ballot became "not a ball but a piece of paper"

Answer 1