Practical Details.

In order to show precisely the amount of labour which would be required to carry out the proposed method, it may be as well to state what appears to be the most convenient way of making up the result. As in the ordinary methods, it would be necessary to have a poll-book in which to keep a tally of the votes. In this book the names of the candidates should be printed from the same type as the ballot papers are printed from. Each ballot paper should be placed with the names in a line with the corresponding names in the poll book, and the numbers written opposite to the names on each ballot paper should then be copied into the successive columns of the poll-book. In this way the risk of error in transcription would be exceedingly small, and any error which was made would be at once detected on placing the ballot paper side by side with the column in which its numbers are recorded. When this is done many of the columns would contain vacant spaces. In every vacant space in each column write a number greater by unity than the largest number copied from the voting paper page 39 into that column. After doing this add up the figures in each row; then find the mean or average of the sums. Every candidate who has a sum equal to or greater than the average is to be excluded. A little consideration will show that this process will give the same result as the method described above. When the papers have once been copied into the poll-book as just described, all subsequent scrutinies that may be necessary can be conducted without handling the voting papers again.