This question was posed by Jon Fraenkel, a member of the Practitioners' Network.

Original Question:

What is the best way to manually count ballot papers in block vote (BV) systems?

With first-past-the-post systems, one can easily pile the ballots for each candidate, and then tally the totals. Where there is more than one vote recorded on ballot papers, some kind of tallying system seems unavoidable. What techniques are used in counting block vote ballots elsewhere?

Introduction

“Vote counting is one of the most crucial stages in the election process. Failure to complete the count and transmit results in a quick, transparent and accurate manner can jeopardize public confidence in the elections and will directly affect whether candidates and political parties accept the final results.” (The ACE Encyclopedia)

Block Voting (BV) belongs to the “family” of plurality / majority Electoral Systems (The other two big “families” being proportional, or mixed Electoral Systems) and is in fact a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system with the difference that it occurs in multi-member districts with voters having as many votes as there are positions to be filled. In a five-member constituency for example, the five candidates with the largest number of votes are elected, regardless of the actual percentage level of votes they receive. In BV systems, voters are usually free to vote for individual candidates regardless of party affiliation, but they are not entitled to cast the same vote more than once. Voters are also most often free to not use all the votes they are entitled to if they like. (In other words, in the above case of five seats, the voter could choose to only vote for three candidates for example and leaving the remaining two votes empty).

The rationale for using BV is generally known to be the possibility to provide a good opportunity to retain voters' ability to vote for individuals while at the same time increasing the role of political parties in comparison with the straightforward FPTP systems. On the other hand, BV is known to have caused problematic results by exaggerating the disproportional effects potentially present in the FPTP system. This can happen if all different candidates who are being voted in belong to the same political party. This was the case for example in Mauritius in 1982 and 1995 where the party in opposition before the election won every seat in the legislature with only 64 per cent and 65 per cent of the vote, respectively. Out of the countries and territories surveyed for International IDEA’s handbook on Electoral System Design, the Block Vote is used in 15 countries and territories, which represent 8 per cent of the countries included, but its 32 million people only represent 0.7 per cent of the total population of surveyed countries.

The issue of the question posed to the experts thus relates to how to best deal with the ballots of varied nature that emerges in BV systems. Continuing on the above example of five seats to be filled, while some of the ballots to be counted might only have two votes ticked on them, another share of the ballots could have three or five votes for example. In some of the ballots, all votes might be addressed to candidates belonging to one and the same political party and yet other ballots could indicate support for five candidates from five different political parties etc. In this sense, the process of swiftly counting candidate names, political affiliation and number of votes on the ballots can be difficult to administer while paying due attention to effectiveness, transparency and political patterns in the process.

The below text tries to use the experts’ replies and other information to provide some ideas on counting and tallying techniques to use for adequately counting block votes.

Counting block votes - Summary of replies

As pointed out in the introduction, the type and design of the electoral system largely impacts upon how to conduct transparent and accurate vote counting. The legal framework should clearly indicate how the counting will be carried out (manually, mechanically, or electronically), where it will take place (directly at the polling stations or at specific counting centre), who will be responsible, and eventually the means used for the transmission of the results. The set of resources available should also be taken in consideration, as they will greatly influence the count, balancing integrity, accuracy, and speed.

Most of the experts involved in this question believe that manually counting the ballots per a “call and tally” approach can be a time-consuming process, but on the other hand that it also helps guaranteeing transparency, integrity and trust in the system. Basic training of the electoral officials, for example, could be important because the effectiveness of any vote count process depends on the counting staff. Voter education is also important, as every individual should be aware of how the votes will be translated into seats, and how the count will proceed. And finally, the transmission of results should be structured and transparent in order to guarantee the acceptance of the general outcome of the election.

In this line, Koki Muli refers to her own experience in Kenya to provide a useful example of how the counting procedure is done there. Kenya inherited the first-past-the-post electoral system, and block voting is currently in use. Vote counting is carried out in the voting stations by presiding officers, and once the ballot boxes have been opened, the ballots are sorted based on the candidates and their party symbols and piled in that order, the presiding officer takes the pile for each candidate and displays each ballot paper to all political parties’ agents and observers so that they can all agree on the validity of the vote and counts them.

Bernard Owen, quoting “The Electoral Administrator’s Manual” (Lasham & Smith 1992), provides an example to describe a possibly way of counting. If eight candidates representing four parties are competing for two seats, “the easiest method of dealing with the counts is simply to separate the blocks of votes into piles for each party and then award each of the candidates concerned the number of votes in the counted ballot papers for each party”. Since the votes are sorted initially per political affiliation, Mr. Owen means that this system can be favorably used where there is a strong political pattern.

Julian Type presents a variation to adopt in the case of weak or non-existent political pattern and when maximum transparency is not judged as extremely important: “Sort the ballot papers according to the number of votes recorded on them, and tally the different groups.  For example, 10 papers with 1 vote, 20 papers with 2 votes, 30 with 3 votes, 850 with 4 votes in an election where 4 candidates are to be elected.  Batch the ballot papers into hundreds. Count through the batch as many times as there are candidates, counting the votes only for one candidate at a time and then tally the votes. A batch of 100 papers with 4 votes must yield 400 votes. Limit the batch size so that mistakes don't take forever to find. Collate the results from the different batches and the job is done.”

Vladimir Pran and S.C. Maunkee refer to the Palestine and Mauritius vote counting examples. In these two cases, during the count a polling official would read out loud the names of candidates marked on each ballot, and at the same time one or two other officials (or “recorders”) would keep track of the votes, either on a large scoreboard or in counting sheets. This sort of operations can sometimes take a long time, especially in local elections, where voters could elect as much as 15 people. Similarly, Debashis Sen talks about the manual vote counting in India. During the count, electoral officials set up the ballot papers according to the first preference votes, and winners are noted. Afterwards, “excess” second preference votes of the winners are then stacked up with other candidates’ stacks, and results are tabulated after each round of counting.

Conclusion

Vote counting represents an important, although often overlooked, step of the management of the elections, which is essential to the overall perception of the elections. The counting operations are indeed effected by the electoral system, and the experts believe that the Block Vote requires special measures and procedures in particular, such as budgetary resources, clear guidelines on how, when and by whom the counting should be done, and with training provided to those involved in the counting procedure. On the specific issue of tallying techniques, the experts provide various possible avenues to explore. In the end, whether the piles of ballots are sorted by means of the number of votes, the name of the candidate, the political affiliation, or per preference depends on the specific circumstance and needs of the country at hand.

Related sources:

Reynolds, Andrew and Elklit, Jørgen, JORDAN: Electoral System Design in the Arab World (Stockholm: International IDEA).

Lasham, Charles, and Smith, George in Nigel Buttler (ed.), The Electoral Administrator's Manual (Crayford: Shaw & Sons Limited, 1992)

ACE Encyclopedia:

Vote Counting

Electoral Systems

This reply was written together with Licia Nicoletti

Input received, with thanks from:

S.C. Maunkee

Koki Muli

Bernard Owen

Vladimir Pran

Debashis Sen

Julian Type

In Palestininian PLC and local elections, one polling official would read out loud names that were marked on the ballot, ballot by ballot. Another official would on the large scoreboard add vote to a candidate whose name was pronounced. This sometimes took a long time, especially in local elections, where in some councils voters could vote up to 15 people.

In India, for proportional voting when a voter gives "1", "2", "3" etc as preferences, we set up piles of ballot papers according to first preference votes. Thereafter, votes obtained by clear winners are noted. The "excess" 2nd preference votes of the winners are then stacked up with other candidates' stacks. Results are tabulated after each round of counting.

During my visit to Australia during their General Elections in Nov 2007, I found that they use an interesting variation. They have proportional representation in Senate elections. In the ballot paper, the voter is given two choices: (1) Agree to the sequence of according preference given by Major-Political-Party-A or Major-Political-Party-B OR, (2) individually give the preferences....For options (1), counting is easy as the sequence is decided by the party in advance.

The best answer I found was in "The Electoral Administrator's Manual" by Charles Lasham and George Smith, Shaw and Sons ed.  It may not be reproduced without the permission of the copyright holder

MULTIPLE VACANCY COUNTS

Schofield 12.01-12.08

This section looks at various ways of dealing with counts where there is more than one vacancy to filled.  The procedure for counting is explained in Schofield Chapter 12 insofar as the preliminaries are concerned and these are common to single and multiple vacancy counts.

Multiple vacancy counts can range from 3 candidates for two vacancies, being the smallest type of multiple vacancy count, through to major Parish or Community Council contests where there can be well over 30 candidates for fifteen or more seats.  There are a variety of methods of dealing with multiple vacancy counts and the first matter to be assessed is whether there is likely a predominance pattern of voting for one or other political party.  Whatever the local political pattern is, there are bound to be some crossover votes and in many cases (particularly on parish councils) there is no political pattern of voting.  This means that all of the votes have to be counted through methods such as counting sheets or  the double-sided sticky tape.

Block Voting

To deal first with block voting methods.  If there are, say, eight candidates, two from each of four parties, for two vacancies and there is a strong political pattern, then the easiest method of dealing with the counts is simply to separate the blocks of votes into piles for each party and then award each of the candidates concerned the number of votes in the counted ballot papers for each party.  There are variations on this method and sometimes a template with blanks for the two particular candidates are used for ease of identification or, alternatively, colour coded dummy ballot papers.  Most experienced practitioners in this field would advise that after dealing with the first few ballot papers the counters rapidly recognize the combinations of candidates.  It is useful to have clearly labelled receptacles to collect these “block” votes; the surnames of the candidates and their number on the ballot paper as a recognition factor on the receptacles is an additional benefit.  For example, the block vote receptacle for 2 and 6 would simply have

2 JONES

6 SMITH

in large labels on the receptacle.

Kenya like a number of former British colonies inherited first-past-the-post electoral system. This is a system where the winning candidate is the one with the most votes irrespective of the number of candidates and the size of the electoral constituency. Kenya has 210 constituencies each represented by a single member. Additional 12 members are nominated and shared between parliamentary parties depending on their parliamentary strength. We practice block voting.

Each of the 210 constituencies has a number of polling stations, ranging from 58 to almsot 300 polling stations depending on the number of registered voters - for example in the 2007 presidential, parliamentary and civic elections there were 27,555 gazetted polling stations (the number varies each year depending on the total number of registered voters country-wide).

Counting of ballots/votes is conducted at polling stations by presiding officers who are in charge of the polling stations (PS). Then the results of each PS is delivered physically to one tallying centre at the constituency level. A returning officer (RO) is in charge of a constituency. After tallying all the results from PSs the RO then declares the winners within the constituency - these are Members of Parliament and Councillors (civic leaders). The RO then personally transmits presidential elections results for the constituency they are responsible to the Electoral Commission of Kenya headquarters, where the results are tallied from all the 210 constituencies and the chairperson then announces and declares the winner of the presidential election and personally hands over the certificate to the president elect before swearing in ceremony.

Counting at a polling station involves openning the ballot boxes (all three of them beginning with presidential, then parliamentary and finally civic in turns), then emptying all the ballot papers on a table. The ballots/votes are then sorted based on the candidates and their party symbols and piled in that order. An clerk (six of them) are given piles of ballots of the participating candidates. Then the presiding officer takes one pile for each candidate at a time displays the ballot paper to all the political parties' agents and observers so that they can all agree on the validity of the vote and counts them. Each political party agent and observers are given the results form with all the names of the candidates, their party a blank space for them to complete the results. After the count is over for each election, the presiding officer repeats the results for each candidate and signs the results forms for all the agents and stamps them with the ECK stamp. A copy of the results forms for each of the 3 elections is then sealed inside the relevant ballot box with all the essential elections materials including the field note books handwritten by the Presiding Officers of what transpired in the polling station from openning of the voting till the end. Another copy of each of the results of the 3 elections is posted outside the polling station for all to see and record the results. Another copy of the results form is attached to other voting day forms which together with all other non-essential elections materials and the sealed 3 ballot boxes are taken by the PO to the RO who then delivers all the materials to the ECK.

The ballot boxes are sealed for a period of 5 years unless there is a dispute on the results or an election petition.

Manual counting really takes a long time but people are prepared to wait because it is very transparent.

Tallying of all the results from the polling stations on the other hand is not that transparent. The RO receives the results and with presiding officers, the results are keyed in a computer tallied and announced. The declaration of parliamentary and civic elections results by the RO is final and once relayed to Nairobi can only be challenged by a petition court. However, the RO can resolve disputes such as retallying results a number of times. The RO can also resolve disputes not addressed conclusively by the Presiding Officer. The the RO delivers in person certificates for MPs and councillors elect with the file containing all original results forms of each election given to him or her by the PO. The ECK Hq cannot dispute any results submitted to them by the RO. They are obliged by law to announce them as they are! Then the ECK keys in a computer all the results of the presidential election and once it is clear all or almost all the consitituencies have made returns, then the ECK chairperson can announce the winner of the presidential election. The ECK can recount or retally all the results if there is a dipute which is presented to the chairperson in writing within 24 hours and before the announcement of the final results.

As Bernard Owen says, the prevalence of pattern voting will often suggest a short cut.

And, if transparency for observers is important, a "call and tally" approach is probably best.

If there are only weak or non-existent patterns and maximum transparency is unnecessary, try this.

Sort the ballot papers according to the number of votes recorded on them, and tally the different groups.  For example, 10 papers with 1 vote, 20 papers with 2 votes, 30 with 3 votes, 850 with 4 votes in an election where 4 candidates are to be elected.  Batch the ballot papers into hundreds.

Count through the batch as many times as there are candidates, counting the votes only for one candidate at a time.  This is tedious, but can be done quite quickly.  Tally the votes.  A batch of 100 papers with 4 votes must yield 400 votes.  Limit the batch size so that mistakes don't take forever to find.

Collate the results from the different batches and the job is done.

On behalf of S.C. Maunkee:

When there is more than one vote recorded the system adopted in Mauritius is as follows:

A caller calls the name of the candidate receiving the vote and a pair of recorders independently records, through the bar chart system, the votes received by each candidate in his counting sheet.  At the end of the counting, the figures of each recorder is tallied.

(S.C. Maunkee)
Principal Electoral Officer