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Misled by the recent assimilation of voting to political suffrage alone, but also by the apparent decline in the practice of voting in Ancien Régime France, the historiography of the modern period (16th-18th centuries) took few pains to go into a detailed description of the modes of collective decision-making and the issues at stake in the time between the Renaissance and the French Revolution. Although, at first glance, we see such electoral institutions as the Estates General or certain town councils falling by the wayside or being neutralized by the monarchy, on closer analysis, we discover that voting continued to play a central role in the representation and organization of society, largely because it served a number of purposes other than democratic selection of the political élites. A centralized monarchy copes quite well with the existence of a number of sites that recruit members, share responsibilities, administer daily matters and transmit powers by means of elections that are complex but vital to the image social agents hold of their social world and its legitimate reproduction. Examination of a few assemblies, bodies or communities – universities, guilds, the general assemblies of the clergy, certain religious orders – provide illustrations worth considering in any attempt at making a social history of voting.