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Many employment relationships concede rents to workers. Depending on thepolitical institutions, the presence of such rents allows employers to use thethreat of withdrawing them to control their workers' political behavior, suchas their votes in the absence of secret ballot. We examine the effects of theintroduction of the secret ballot in Chile in 1958 on voting behavior. Before thereforms, localities with more pervasive patron-client relationships tended toexhibit a much stronger support for the right-wing parties, traditionally associatedwith the landed oligarchy. After the reform, however, this difference acrosslocalities completely disappeared. (JEL D72, N46, O13, O15, O17)