Paper ballots were only (loosely) standardized in the 1970s and it still is valid to simply write manually the name of the candidate on an empty piece of paper. So there’s no official date when they appeared, they were simply increasingly used where candidates could pay for them.
The rationale being that handing voters a ballot with your name printed on it increased your chances of them voting for you, as opposed to requiring them to manually write your name (many voters being illiterate too).
In general mass elections start in France in 1848. There definitely were ballot papers, though not ubiquitous, used in the 1848-1849 presidential and legislative elections. There may have been some used before but I have not seen examples of them.
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