These 41 Mysterious Objects Had Everyone Baffled Until The Internet Came To The Rescue

“It’s for voting. People use white and black balls to vote, and stick them in the hole. When done, that side is opened, and the balls are counted. This is also the origin of the term ‘blackballed.'”

—u/brock_lee

When asked how it worked, u/brock_lee later replied, “There are white and black balls available to vote with. Sometimes, a single black ball will be enough that the vote fails (such as membership in a club that has to be unanimous). So, if there are 40 members of the club, they may put 40 white balls and an unknown number of black balls (let’s say five) in the hopper. When this is passed to someone, they pick a ball and place it in the hole. If there are five black balls, they don’t know how many they started with, so they have to vote on how they feel. And, when the votes/balls are tallied, even a single black ball will deny membership.

If it’s a majority, and there are 20 members, they may either give each person one white and one black ball ahead of time, or they may put 20 white and 20 black balls in the hopper. And people put one in the hole. Even if they see there are far fewer than 20 black balls, and they know membership will be denied, and they were opposed to membership, they have no real reason to vote white, since the votes are anonymous.”