n each order, there be in
all four competitors chosen to every magistracy.

If any controversy arises in an order of electors, one of the censors
(these being at this game the groom-porters) is advertised by the
secretary who brings him in, and the electors disputing are bound to
acquiesce in his sentence. For which cause it is that the censors do not
ballot at the urns; the signory also abstains, lest it should deform the
house: wherefore the blanks in the side urns are by so many the
fewer. And so much for the lot, which is of the greater art but less
consequence, because it concerns proposition only: but all (except the
tribunes and the judges, which being but assistants have no suffrage)
are to ballot at the result, to which I now come.

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.

The ballotins having thus gathered the suffrages, bring the