Eventually, this arrangement became such a given in presidential elections that when the time came for the states to take over the printing and distribution of ballots (a development necessitated by the introduction of the secret ballot in the 1880s) most states did not bother to list the names of the electors on ballots, instead listing the candidates to whom those electors were pledged. In doing so, they also ensured that the winner-take-all method of selecting presidential electors that had become so firmly entrenched in the U.S. presidential electoral system by that point would become established by law in most states. There were some exceptions, however, such as Alabama, described below.