#ball guy

Various trainer stamps (made from cards)

New Pairs for this month's datamine!

Academy Kris and Igglybuff, Hassel and Baxcalibur, Brassius and Sudowoodo, Lana and Shiny Dondozo, Ball Guy and Hisuian Electrode (his Lodge Pair is regular Voltorb), (free) Furisode Girl and Aromatisse, and a Mix Scout Elio and Decidueye.

As an aside, why does Ball Guy's mindscape give the impression he's partnering with fucking Zygarde???

Do weknow if the scrutineer cardinals vote in the conclave. From what I remember they were voting age, but I haven't counted up the ballots inthe first vote to check whether they are included or not?

Do you happen to know?

Hi there @darkhorse-javert , this is a great question!

Who are the guys that count the votes in the conclave, how do they get the job, and do they get to cast a vote themselves?

Part 8 of Jolie's Occasional Lectures on Catholic Church Organisation, Canon Law and Other Things You Never Thought You Would End Up Wanting To Read Meta About Until You Contracted The Conclave Bug 😝

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

The cardinals who count the votes and announce the result of each round of voting are called the scrutineers (because they "scrutinise" the ballots). And yes, the scrutineers vote, both IRL and in the Conclave universe.

The scrutineers are chosen by lot from among the cardinal electors. It would be against the strict rules of secrecy to admit anyone who is ineligible to vote to the voting ceremony (like the cardinals who are 80 and over, or any other prelates or church officials below the rank of cardinal), even just to serve as "poll workers". But it would also be unfair to deprive a cardinal elector of his vote just because the lot to be a scrutineer has fallen on him.

In the film, we don’t see the scrutineers voting, but then we never see everyone voting. In the book, there is a direct reference to the scrutineers casting their votes along with everyone else (in chapter 7), and the votes always add up to 118 (the number of cardinal electors in the book).

The role of the scrutineers has been modified in the Conclave universe in three significant ways, compared to the rules governing RL conclaves, for the sake of simplicity and continuity. There is also a fourth modification which seems to have been a purely artistic choice but remains a little mysterious.

1. IRL, there are more cardinals than the three scrutineers in charge of overseeing and organising the voting - nine in total, all chosen from among the cardinal electors. In addition to the three scrutineers, who basically do IRL exactly what they do in the book & movie, there are also three "revisors" who recount the ballots and check the scrutineers' tally for accuracy before the ballots are collected and burned, and three "infirmarers" who are tasked with collecting ballots from any cardinals who may fall ill during the conclave and may be confined to their rooms in the Casa Santa Marta. The revisors are mentioned at the end of chapter 7 in the book and the infirmarers are referred to at the end of chapter 13. Neither of these two types of officials appear in the movie at all.

2. IRL, all nine "poll workers" are chosen by lot directly inside the Sistine Chapel, after everyone else has been kicked out with the ritual words "extra omnes", immediately before the voting starts. Whereas the book states that they were chosen "days in advance", which would of course facilitate bribery, corruption, intimidation or other forms of undue influence, and therefore open the door to a manipulation of the (official) election result. The point of the RL rule of appointing them on the spot is that you don’t know in advance who will be in charge, so you don’t know who to bribe, intimidate or otherwise behave inappropriately towards. Once you're inside the Sistine and the ceremony has begun, there is of course no more time for that, and there are too many witnesses. But of course choosing the scrutineers, revisors and infirmarers immediately ahead of the actual voting would just have been more pedestrian bureaucracy for Robert Harris to depict in the book, and I can see how he was worried about his readers losing patience already even with all the infodumping that he did do.

3. IRL, the "poll workers" are also chosen anew at the start of each voting session (i. e. every morning and every afternoon). Again, this is so you can’t exert any undue influence over them in between voting sessions, such as at meals or overnight. In contrast to this, the Conclave universe retains the same scrutineers (and presumably also the same revisors and infirmarers) throughout the entire conclave. The scrutineers are named in the book as Cardinal Lukša, Archbishop of Vilnius; Cardinal Mercurio, the Prefect for the Congregation of Clergy; and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Newby, who plays the role of the "announcer". The revisors and infirmarers remain nameless.

This is probably in order not to confuse the readers with too many new names in the book, or the audience with too many new faces in the movie. All in all, another understandable narrative choice, I find. Plus, if they had rotated the job, we would have been deprived of the joy of the "announcer" guy in the movie painfully over-enunciating the name "Cardinale Bellini" so many times. 😆

Then again, drawing new lots before every voting session may have come with some extra comedy, too. Imagine the Holy Spirit deciding that Tedesco and Sabbadin would have to cooperate on running the election, or Adeyemi and Tremblay overseeing the voting together after the "Judas!" confrontation. 😝

4. And finally - the movie (not the book) actually has four scrutineers overseeing the voting. Three cardinals sit at the table with the urn, one who picks out the ballots one by one, one as "announcer", and one with the thread and needle who collects the ballots on a red string so there’s no confusion whether a ballot has been counted and processed or not… And then there’s Ball Guy.

Ball Guy sits at an extra table and does something that can of course hardly be described as playing with his balls, but he kinda does… I assume his board of wooden spheres is a quaint, old-fashioned instrument for keeping the tally to make sure everybody votes (which is an obligation in canon law - no cardinal who is present at a conclave can refuse to cast a ballot, although they can refuse to travel to Rome for the conclave to start with) and nobody votes more than once. But I have no idea if it’s real. (The one they use in the movie also only has a hundred spheres, but there are over a hundred electors…)

To add to the mystery, Ball Guy is also only visible in the first round of voting and never again after that.

Where did he go?