701: vote, devote, and vow Nov 8, 2016

Do you have to be devoted to a candidate to vote for a candidate? Morally no, but I vow to answer as a linguist. 'Vote' comes from the Latin participle, 'vote' meaning 'a vow' or 'a wish', and the verbal form of 'votum', 'vovere' gave English, 'vow'. 'Devote', etymologically speaking, is only a more formal form of the same word. Generally, those words have changed little over time, but still, American politics are based off of Ancient Athens not Rome, supposedly. The Greek for 'vote' is 'psephos' which means 'pebble'. In Ancient Greece, there were a few different ways that votes were cast, including by hand, shouting, or using discs to be more secretive, but early elections were based off of pebbles being used as ballots.