The counting of votes can take place at the site that is used for voting (voting station) or a more centralized counting location, either at the district level, municipal level or regional level. In some jurisdictions all counting takes place centrally at the national level.

Advantages of Counting at the Voting Station

The main advantages of vote counting at voting stations are speed, cost effectiveness and transparency. As the vote counting can start as soon as the voting station closes, interim results can be released faster than at a counting centre. For an average estimate, a poll of four hundred voters, counted categorically, could take less than two hours. Since the same staff receive, count, and transport the ballots from and to the local office, fewer personnel are involved in the overall process.

This reduces the pressure of logistics, eliminating the need to identify counting centres, recruit and train additional personnel, develop or procure specific materials. Also, physical requirements are mostly identical to those used for the voting procedures: table, chairs, forms, pencils, calculator, fasteners, seals, etc.

Since the ballot boxes are kept at the same place where the vote took place, the same voting station officers, national and international electoral observers, party representatives and candidates stay during the counting process.

This makes supervision easier for the person in charge of the voting station. Counting at voting stations indirectly promotes participation of the population since the process is closer to their home, making the results more tangible. The process then tends to be regarded as open, accessible, and legitimate.

Not only does it demonstrate transparency, but it can also enhance public confidence, especially if voting station officers are carrying out their duties in the same area in which they live.

There is no need to move the ballot boxes from the voting station to the alternative counting centre. The integrity of the voting and counting process may be severely affected if there is a perception that the ballot boxes may have been/or were tampered with during the transit to the counting centres.

Opportunities for fraud will always exist, but safeguards can be developed to make them difficult when votes are counted at a voting station and transmitted in duplicate to local offices.

Disadvantages

One disadvantage of counting at voting stations is the long hours required of the personnel involved in the process. It is quite common for voting to open at 6h00 and close at 20h00 or later, followed by a two hour or longer counting process. This would mean a very long working day for the voting and counting officers.

Since they are not allowed to leave the voting station during the day, this may increase the possibility of mistakes when the time comes to count the ballots and fill out the forms. To avoid this adequate food, water, and sanitary facilities should be provided.

In terms of security, it is harder to protect many voting stations than one or several counting centres. This can be an important issue in highly contested elections taking place in a violent area or politically charged environment. However, this factor may not be important if security is already provided during voting day/s.

The presence at the voting station of people with high political profiles from the community can be intimidating for some workers in the voting station during the count.

In some circumstances, counting at a voting station may also affect the secrecy of the vote, once the results are known. Post-election intimidation and threats to voters from a voting station can be made by political parties, if it is known that nearly all voters voted in a particular manner. This factor is minimized, but not entirely eliminated, in the case of counting centres based on electoral districts.

There is a risk that the counting criteria for rejecting ballots and reporting results will be inconsistent between voting stations The risk of these problems arising decreases when effective and detailed training and instruction is provided.

A reliable communication system is required for transmission of voting station statements of the votes to a central location. Depending on the number of voting stations, the local office may need the capacity in their communication system to handle several voting station results coming in at the same time. If a system failure occurs, then all the results are delayed.

This affects the speed of releasing the results, which may generate uncertainty in the political environment. In some countries where telecommunications networks are not well developed, this can be a major problem leading to mistrust of the system and accusations of manipulation or fraud.

Counting at Counting Centres

Some jurisdictions conduct their counting at central counting centres.

Rationale for Counting Centres

A counting centre approach may be used in the following situations:

• when voting stations are not properly equipped for counting;

• when there are very few party or candidate representatives or observers available to observe the count in a large number of voting stations;

• when a complex ballot makes the count too time-consuming and complicated for the voting station officers to manage after the close of the station, warranting the specially trained personnel and facilities that a counting centre can offer.

A complicated ballot could be one on which several questions are posed on the same ballot; or when voters have to prioritise their choices;

• when the secrecy of the vote preference of an individual may be compromised by the announcement of results in voting stations with very few voters;

• when the secrecy of a community's vote preference needs to be safeguarded due to the threat of violence, repercussions, or intimidation in politically volatile situations;

• when security conditions are such that it is deemed easier to secure the protection of a smaller number of counting centres rather than of a large number of voting stations;

• when a mechanical or computerised counting system requires centralisation.

In a counting centre approach, where ballots from two or more elections are mixed together, with results published by counting centre instead of by voting station, it is more difficult to link communities with affiliation.

This may help to protect the secrecy of the voting pattern, especially in some small communities (normally the ballots are counted by voting station but the centre approach will give the possibility to merge).

Even in countries where the count is predominantly done at voting stations, one or more counting centres can ease administration for certain types of ballots.

This includes absentee votes, mail votes from armed forces, diplomatic missions, refugees, incarcerated persons or persons residing outside their electoral district which may come from various voting stations, local or abroad, or directly from the voters (by mail).

Such ballots can be forwarded to the appropriate counting centre and added to the ballots from applicable voting, making counting easier to organise and easier to protect the secrecy of such absentee votes.

There may be many counting centres or there may be only one national counting centre.

The limit to the level of centralisation will be the level at which votes are translated into a number of legislators or seats. In a First Past the Post (FPTP) system the counting centre may be at the electoral district level (at a town hall, for example) but not at the national level.In a proportional representation system based on regional lists, a counting centre may not be more centralised than the region that the list is based on.