Day 9 - Entering Ballots in TallyJ

The ability to record what people have written on their ballot papers, and have the computer correctly count all the names, is the core purpose for TallyJ.

Here is a sample screen, as shown on Day 2:

The ballot is shown on the right side. In this sample, we are looking at ballot #A4 - the 4th ballot entered at computer A. TallyJ will record that Glen and John are the tellers currently using the computer. Knowing who typed the ballot helps later, if there is any confusion... they may be able to recall what decisions were made, etc.

As each name is typed (A), it gets added to the bottom of the list of names on the ballot. The goal is to exactly copy what is found on the paper onto the screen. When one name is spoiled, the reason can be recorded (C). Similarly if the ballot has problems, tellers still copy as much from the paper onto the screen as possible. For example, if a name is duplicated, the teller would enter it twice, just as it is on the paper. TallyJ can then report that the ballot is spoiled because of a duplicate name. If there are too many names, enter them all, and TallyJ will report that the ballot is spoiled because of too many names.

As we can see in this image, the tellers decided that this ballot needs more review and discussion with the head teller, so they marked it as such (F) and now the status is "Needs Review" (G) which can also be seen in the list of all ballots at this location (E).

Once all the names have been entered for a ballot, the teller clicks on "Start New Ballot" and is ready to enter the next ballot. TallyJ automatically creates the ballot #, and one of the tellers at this computer writes that code onto the ballot paper, to associate the paper ballot with the copy of it in TallyJ.

When counting ballots by hand, a common practice is to cut the ballot up into individual pieces of paper, one for each name. When using TallyJ, this should not be done! In fact, if a ballot envelope is opened and the voter has done that already, tellers need to join them back together to be a single ballot - so they need to have some sticky tape!

In practice, tellers have found that a normal ballot for an Assembly election usually takes under a minute to enter. So with 4 or 5 computers going, 300 ballots can be processed in about an hour! What used to be the most time-consuming part of the process, is now quick and efficient...

Next day >>>