High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! There exist various methods through which the ballots cast at an election may be counted, prior to applying a voting system to obtain one or more winners.Manual counting requires a physical ballot that represents voter intent. The physical ballots are read and interpreted; then results are individually tabulated.Such a system may be used for recounts in areas where mechanical or automated counting systems are used.Paper ballots, typically punch cards or marksense, are collected and fed into a machine to tabulate vote totals. Tabulation can occur with each individual ballot, or in batches.