The four orders of electors having perfected their lists, the face of
the house is changed: for the urns are taken away, and every senator
and magistrate is seated in his proper place, saving the electors, who,
having given their suffrages already, may not stir out of their
chambers till the house have given theirs, and the rest of the ballot be
performed; which follows in this manner:
The four lists being presented by the secretaries of each council of
electors to the signory, are first read, according to their order, to
the house, with an audible voice; and then the competitors are put to
the ballot or suffrage of the whole Senate in this manner: A, A named
to be strategus in the first order, whereupon eight ballotins, or pages,
such as are expressed by the figures f, f, take eight of the boxes
represented, though rudely, by the figures g, g, and go four on the one
and four on the other side of the house, that is, one to every bench,
signifying “A, A named to be the strategus in the first order..” and
every magistrate or senator (beginning by the strategus and the orator
first) holds up a little pellet of linen, as the box passes, between his
finger and his thumb, that men may see he has but one, and then puts it
into the same. The box consisting in the inner part of two boxes, being
painted on the outside white and green, to distinguish the affirmative
from the negative side, is so made that when your hand is in it, no man
can see to which of the sides you put the suffrage, nor hear to which it
falls, because the pellet being linen, makes no noise. The strategus and
the orator having begun, all the rest do the like.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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