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crystalwizard
Forum Moderator

Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 5194

Posted 4/15/2007 7:06 AM (GMT -5)

The setting is a world which is very close to the earth we have now with a couple minor changes. One of those changes is that voting is still being done with paper ballots. And they all have to be collected and tallied some how. Does anyone know how this was done before the advent of all the electronic stuff? Would each polling place count theirs and send the tally some where else or were all the ballots collected, taken some where and counted there?

The election in this case is for the Mayor of a city about the size of Dallas, TX

STForstner
Acolyte

Date Joined Nov 2005
Total Posts : 384

Posted 4/15/2007 11:35 AM (GMT -5)

Well, we're still using paper ballots here. The ballots go through a machine that counts them, then they are transported to the courthouse where they are counted again.

Prior to having the machine to count them, they were collected from the polling stations and transported to the county courthouse and counted by hand. The only time I expect they would be counted on the premises of the polling station would be in a local election where the count affected only that small political unit.

Firlefanz
Sage

Date Joined Mar 2007
Total Posts : 1246

Posted 4/15/2007 11:56 AM (GMT -5)

We're still doing it the old-fashioned way in Germany. And since my DH has been helping with elections, here's how it's done, in each polling place:

There's a list of all people who are allowed to vote. Those who show up get a mark in the list - that's the base number. You should have exactly that number of votes in total.

When the voting is closed, all votes are sorted into heaps - according to the party or person voted for - and counted. The total has to be correct, obviously, which works as control. If it's an election with more than one kind of vote, the process is first done for the first vote, and then for the second vote.

Here, votes with more than the allowed number of votes (in some elections, people have two votes), or votes with anything else scribbled on them are invalid and sorted out - but they are still counted.

The results are communicated via telephone to the town hall, and the election manager - and there's a time limit when those results should be in, usually two hours after closing the polling places. The urns (?) and the counted votes are then returned to town hall. Votes have to be archived for a number of years, too, just in case someone demands a recount (which has to be ordered by a judge).

All in all, it's a very simple and straightforward process that just takes time. The few times a recount was ordered, the error margin was shown to be very narrow.

- Call me Firle.

Hannah Steenbock

Mystical Adventures
Beyond Horizons

crystalwizard
Forum Moderator

Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 5194

Posted 4/15/2007 1:48 PM (GMT -5)

Ok thanks. I kind of wanted to have all the votes taken to a central location, but I wanted to make sure that was realistic. Evidently it is.

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