Summary of Process
At the national level, logistics should be carefully planned for receiving results from several counting centres at the same time. Following are some suggestions to improve the efficiency of the process. Although, these suggestions might need to be modified depending on the country's infrastructure, or other factors that might affect the implementation of these suggestions.
For greatest efficiency, one general phone number or fax number should be given to people transmitting the results to the national office of the Electoral Management Body. Most telephone and fax systems now allow for calls to a single number to automatically switch to the next available phone/fax unit on that line.
For example, one team should take care of the incoming results, and should transmit the information to the data entry person or person in charge of gathering the results.
A wall chart, chalkboard chart or spreadsheet listing for each electoral district should be prepared and then completed as the results come in. Once all the information for each counting centre is received, the combined results for the country should be finalised.
If a country is divided into several time zones, the results will come in at different times of the day at the national level (depending on the closing hour of the polls). The required staff should be carefully scheduled to be available when they are needed to compile the national results.
Special ballots, write-in ballots, mail-in ballots as well as ballots cast in ordinary polls, advance polls, and mobile polling stations should be part of the count and should be released as soon as possible.
Depending on the amount of delay that is acceptable, special ballots can be counted a few days prior to election day or after the closing of the polls on election day. If the later is the case, then the counting procedures should be designed carefully so it will not delay releasing the final results. For more details on these ballots, please refer to Voting Procedures.
For the special ballots (mail-in and write-in ballots), envelopes received at the head office of the Electoral Management Body are sorted by category: absentee, armed forces, etc. If different colours of envelopes are used, it will facilitate the sorting by category.
For mail-in ballots (see Forms for mail-in and write-in ballots - Canada), three envelopes are originally sent to the voter: a return mailing envelope containing an outer envelope (on which may appear the bar code and signature of the voter) and a secrecy envelope containing the ballot. After verification of proper registration and no previous vote having been taken, and the creation of the audit trail, the secrecy envelope is put into a ballot box with its ballot still contained.
If the special ballots are counted a few days prior to election day, the results should be kept highly secure and only released at the closing of the polls on election day. These special ballots can be used for absentee voting if no mechanism is in place for voting abroad, in embassies for example (please refer to Voting in a Foreign Country for voting in foreign countries). For the counting process, the same rules for vote counting in the country should be followed. Please refer to Absentee Voting for more information on absentee voting.
If advance polls take place over several days, reconciliation can be done at the end of each day, but the ballot choices are not counted. This reconciliation measure is for creating an audit trail of ballot usage. The advance poll ballot boxes are then kept safely until election day and counting should take place at the closing time of the ordinary polls. The counting of advance poll ballots should be done in the presence of representatives of political parties/candidates/options as well as national/international electoral observers. The counting procedures are nearly identical to those used for ordinary polls.
For counting the votes of incarcerated voters, the procedures used for advance polls may be applied but, of course, this will only be possible if voting by incarcerated voters takes place prior to election day.
Use of Technology
The use of phones and faxes are common for transmission of electoral results. To ensure the identity of the person transmitting results via phone or fax, an identification number or code should be given to them. This method is a simple and efficient way to avoid unauthorised people calling in and providing false results.
Transmission of results by modem and computer can also be used. Once again, safeguards and passwords must be built into restricting the transmission of results to authorised persons who are permitted access to the system.
For all types of transmission, systems must be tested prior to election day to verify their capacity under the heavy use they will encounter on election night. A specialist should also be available at any time in case of failure of the systems. A contingency back-up system should also be created, tested and fully available.
