opened), are, in parliamentary elections,
transmitted by the returning officer to the clerk of the crown in chancery
in England, or the sheriff-clerk in Scotland, who destroys them at the end
of one year, unless otherwise directed by an order of the House of Commons,
or of some court having jurisdiction in election petitions. Such petitions
either simply dispute the accuracy of the return on the ground of
miscounting, or wrongous rejection or wrongous admission of papers, in
which case the court examines the counted and rejected papers; or make
allegations of corruption, &c. on which it may be necessary to refer to the
marked counterfoils and ascertain how bribed voters have voted. Since the
elections of 1874 much discontent has been expressed, because judges have
rejected papers with trifling (perhaps accidental) marks other than the X
upon them, and because elections have been lost through the failure of the
officer to stamp the papers. For this purpose the use has been suggested of
a perforating instead of an embossing stamp, while a dark-ground paper with
white voting-spaces would make _misplaced_ votes impossible.

The Ballot Act introduced several new offences, such as forging of papers
or fraudulently defacing or destroying a paper or the official mark;
supplying a paper without due authority; fraudulently putting into the box
a non-official paper; fraudulently taking a paper out of the station
without due authority; destroying, taking, opening or otherwise interfering
with a box or packet of papers then in use for election purposes. These
offences and attempts to commit them are punishable in the case of officers
and clerks with imprisonment for two years, with or without hard labour. In
other cases the term of imprisonment is six months.

The ballot was long criticized as leading to universal hypocrisy and
deception; and Sydney Smith spoke of "voters, in dominos, going to the poll
in sedan-chairs with closely-drawn curtains." The observed effect of a
secret ballot has been, however, gradually to exterminate undue influence.
The alarm of "the confessional" seems to be unfounded, as a Catholic
penitent is not bound to [v.03 p.0280] confess his vote, and if he did so,
it would be a crime in the confessor to divulge it.

_Continental Europe._--The ballot is largely employed in European
countries. In France, where from 1840 to 1845 the ballot, or _scrutin_, had
been used for deliberative voting in the chamber of dep