Nobody was on "The Ballot" in 1860. Back then, the state did not print
ballots for voters to go into the polls and mark up.

Voters obtained ballots, called tickets, from the political parties and
dropped them into the ballot box. Each party printed a ballot with the
list of its presidential electors, and often times the ballots were
printed in variant forms in different parts of the state.

To vote for Lincoln (which some Virginians in the northwestern counties
did, although I do not have time to go look up the totals), all a person
would have to do would be obtain a ballot and drop it in the box. That
was exactly how voters who wanted to vote for Douglas or Bell or
Breckinbridge voted.

If there was no local group of Lincoln supporters, it would have been
just about impossible to get a ballot. It might have been possible for a
voter to write out the names of all the candidates for presidential
elector on a sheet of paper and use that as his ballot.

By the way, there was and is a Raleigh County, North Carolina, too.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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