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Rome adopts the secret ballot
What happened then
In 139 BC the tribune Aulus Gabinius passed a law requiring Roman citizens to vote for magistrates by written ballot instead of calling out their choice aloud. Voters marked a small wax tablet and dropped it into a basket. Further laws extended the secret ballot to criminal trials in 137 BC, to votes on legislation in 131 BC, and finally to treason trials in 107 BC.
What caused it
Roman politics ran on patronage. When votes were spoken aloud, powerful men and their agents could see exactly how their clients, tenants and dependents voted, and lean on them. Reformers saw a written, private ballot as a way to free ordinary voters from that pressure.
How it was resolved
The aristocracy resisted, but the ballot laws stuck. Cicero's dialogue On the Laws records the argument decades later: his brother Quintus attacks the ballot for stripping the leading men of their influence, while Cicero suggests a compromise that keeps the ballot but lets voters show it to respected citizens if they choose.
How it turned out
The secret ballot did not end corruption. Bribery of voters remained a constant scandal, and Rome passed law after law against it. But the principle that a citizen's vote is his own outlived the Republic, and it returned in modern democracies, where the 'Australian ballot' spread across the United States in the 1880s and 1890s.
Sources: Wikipedia: Ballot laws of the Roman Republic · Cicero, On the Laws III (tr. Barham, ToposText) · Wikipedia: Secret ballot
Further reading: SPQR by Mary Beard