All ballots are unfolded (if envelopes are used, then all ballots need to be taken out of the envelopes), one by one, and the poll official makes sure that the ballot is valid. (Please refer to Separating Spoiled/Rejected Ballots for a discussion of spoiled and rejected ballots.)
The poll official may call out loud the name of the candidate/political party/option for whom the ballot has been marked and hold up the ballot for all to see. If several persons are separating and counting the ballots, and identifying those that are potentially to be rejected, the practice of calling out names may not be useful. It may, in fact, be more efficient to separate the ballots according to choice (without counting them), setting aside those potentially to be rejected, and then establish which ballots are actually to be rejected. After the rejections are finalized, the piles of valid ballots for each candidate/party/option can be counted quickly.
In all cases, only poll workers should handle ballots, and it must be very clear that the poll official is the person entitled to make a decision on the validity of a ballot. (See Challenging Results for a more comprehensive discussion on challenging decisions.)
The advantage of showing the ballot and calling out the result of each ballot is that it allows the representatives of political parties and national and international electoral observers to make their own count. The disadvantage is that the process is interrupted each time a rejected ballot is discovered, which tends to make the count of valid ballots very inefficient and slow.
Whichever method is used, the valid ballot papers are put in separate piles on the table: one pile per candidate, per political party, or per option (in the case of a referendum).
Ballot should be examined in such a way as to permit national and international electoral observers, representatives of political parties or candidates, and other persons allowed in the polling station during the counting process, to see the ballot and ensure that it is appropriately separated according to choice. They should have controlled access to contents of sorted ballots. If political party or candidate representatives do not agree with the decision of the poll official, they can make official objections.
While transparency of the process is important, there should be proper controls on the movement of ballots to ensure that the integrity of the count is not compromised.
