Definition

The sacred paper or electronic interface through which citizens exercise their democratic right to choose between candidates they mostly don't like. Originally a small ball dropped in a box—because nothing says "secret vote" like clacking sounds—it's now the vehicle for expressing political preferences, spoiling elections with poor design, or creating conspiracy theories about voting machines. The ballot is mightier than the sword, though significantly less effective at producing clear results in close elections.

Example Usage

The ballot design was so confusing that 3,000 people accidentally voted for a candidate who'd been dead for two weeks.

Source: Common electoral terminology

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electorate

The collective mass of theoretically informed citizens entitled to vote, whose decisions shape democracy and occasionally make political scientists weep into their methodology textbooks. In practice, it's the group that politicians pander to every few years while pretending to care about their actual concerns. Studying the electorate involves trying to predict the unpredictable behavior of millions of people who get their news from their uncle's Facebook posts.

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impeach

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