If the surplus ballots were withdrawn by a blindfolded official, the difference in length or in the texture or quality of the ballot made possible the withdrawal of an undue proportion of Republican votes.

Usually separate boxes were supplied for different sets of officers, and it was often provided that a ballot in the wrong box was void.

An occasional intentional shifting of boxes thus caused many illiterate negroes to throw away their votes.

This scheme reached its climax in the "eight box law" of South Carolina which made illiterate voting ineffective without aid.

Immediately after any literate Republican, white or black, left the polling place the boxes were shifted, and the illiterates whose tickets he had carefully arranged deposited their ballots in the wrong boxes.