At this step, the group takes the time to count the votes right.
The cardinals draw lots to select three members to collect ballots from the infirm, three "tellers" to count the votes and three others to review the results.
The Organization of American States (OAS) sent representatives to monitor the process and called for the delay of the elections arguing that the computer system that had to count the votes did not work well.
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It is expected to take about two days to count all the votes.
However, although voting has closed, it could take weeks to count all the votes among the company's 900, 000 shareholders who hold some 1.9bn shares.
As question time drew to a close, Commons Speaker John Bercow urged MPs to press local authorities in their constituencies to count votes on the day of the forthcoming General Election - rather than the following day, as proposed by some returning officers.
While the statutes require that the secretary certify the vote seven days after the election, which is today, the law also gives the secretary discretion to count votes that come in after the certification.
Broward County and Palm Beach County, backed by the Gore campaign, will argue in Florida Supreme Court that they have the right to hold a hand count and to have those votes certified by the state.
Most Americans do not pay sufficient attention to the fact that our votes count more in the regional primaries beginning in January than in the November general election.
The election came down to who won Florida and although Bush collected more votes according to the official count and an unofficial recount in the state, overseas ballots were yet to be counted.
New York State got basically an ultimatum from the government saying they've got to update their machines, they've got to update the way they count the votes.
As neither had anywhere near the total of 50% required for an outright win, the count went to a second round, with the second-preference votes of the four eliminated candidates reallocated to the leading pair.
The count has been plagued with technical glitches, including a programming error that led to the number of rejected votes being multiplied by a factor of eight.
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Meanwhile, in Jakarta some parties have alleged that the votes were miscounted, prompting the city committee to accept their call for a re-count.
It is the Bush machine, not the Gore machine, that encouraged supporters to storm the office where Miami-Dade officials were trying to count votes.
More than 800, 000 Puerto Ricans live there today, and if Florida had been quicker to count its votes, Puerto Ricans in that state would have been portrayed as the kingmakers of the 2012 election.
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The official count indicates Mr Maduro won 50.8% of votes to Mr Capriles's 49.0%.
Then there were another 600, 000 votes that just weren't able to be counted during the preliminary count because they came from very rural polling booths that were very far away from the central district offices where they had to be physically brought to in order to be counted.
Mr Simpson was declared the winner after a fourth count on Thursday when he polled 89, 521 votes to Sir Ken's 89, 115.
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"I don't think anybody's really been able to get a good hard count, but I would say it's probably in the range of 50 votes, " he said.
The U.S. Supreme Court's stay Saturday of a Florida Supreme Court order to begin the hand count of disputed ballots could push a few electors to vote counter to their states' popular votes, he said.
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