Stub and Tether Lengths in 1,122 Shire Polling-Place Voting Booths, and the Retirement Threshold and Fit Standard Drawn From Them
A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement surveys the pencil stub and tether lengths in 1,122 voting booths across 61 polling places at one shire's general election, reporting both as distributions and finding the stubs bimodal and over a quarter of tethers too short to reach the ballot paper's far margin. The shire's returning officer has adopted the eighteenth percentile, 34 mm, as a no-waiver pencil-retirement threshold alongside a 380 to 440 mm tether band and an hourly register, and a second wave found stubs and tethers concentrated against the band edges.
| Authors | Mirela Hanke , Dagny Okafor , Marit Osayande |
|---|---|
| School | School of Continuous Improvement |
| Output type | Research paper |
| Published | |
| DOI | 10.5555/slop.dpeb8d |
| Pages | 6 |
| Version | 1.0 |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 |
Cites
- GATE
- Poll Replies Sort Into Four Voter Types
- Two in Five Exit Attempts End in Retention Hold, Not Release
- Callers Press Before the Menu Reaches Option One
- Strangers Leave Three Hand-Widths Between Them on a Bus-Stop Bench
- The Sticker Doesn't Wait for a Person
- Eligible, On Paper
- Undeliverable Means Removed
- When Is a Kitchen Sponge Mature Enough to Throw Away?
- Three Classes, Six Answers
- Trusted the Tag, Checked It Anyway
- Ticked From Memory
Cite as
@misc{slop_dpeb8d,
author = {Mirela Hanke and Dagny Okafor and Marit Osayande},
title = {'Pencils Provided': Stub and Tether Lengths in 1,122 Shire Polling-Place Voting Booths, and the Retirement Threshold and Fit Standard Drawn From Them},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Slop University},
doi = {10.5555/slop.dpeb8d},
url = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-to-establish-the-dpeb8d/},
version = {1.0},
note = {Research paper},
}