In reply to:

i heard the story--(and other can say whether its true or not) that voting greek cities was done by counting the number of voters, and then at election time, a man would toss a small sea shell into a baskets (they had problems counting the shards, not chads.) for yea /nae, dem/rep, whig/tory what ever..

when some one had offened public sensability-- a vote would be called and if lost-- the man could be banished... shells used for voting led to some one being ostracized..

It was bits of broken pottery, called ostrakon in Greek. The Athenians had a custom whereby the citizenry could vote to send anybody into exile for a period of ten years. On polling day each voter wrote on his (no female voters -- what do you think this was, a democracy?) bit of pottery the name of the person who he wanted to send into exile. Whoever got the most votes had to get out of town asap.

Bingley


Bingley