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Voters today are also less vulnerable. The secret ballot was implemented at the height of the Gilded Age, when egregious class division plagued America: Lacking any basic legal safeguards for their employment — or a social safety net to assist them in case they lost it — millions of workers were beholden to their bosses and landlords’ interests and lacked protection from reprisals if they voted against their wishes. Today’s workplace is far less hostile: Natural social mobility bred a broad and independent middle class. And progressive era reforms and the New Deal established pioneering labor laws that safeguarded workers rights, provided for Social Security and unemployment benefits and founded powerful regulatory institutions such as the National Labor Relations Board that afforded workers legal protections against unlawful termination — such as the kind they might have experienced for voting the “wrong” way.