At What Times Will the Cardinals Vote Next for a New Pope?

The first conclave in more than a decade, a little more than two weeks after Pope Francis’ death set in motion the process of choosing his successor, comes during an uncertain time for the church, which is facing difficult decisions about its future direction, strained finances and a reckoning over past sexual abuse scandals.

After a morning Mass, the conclave began as the cardinals, all men and nearly all over age 50, filed in a solemn procession into the Sistine Chapel, where they took assigned seats at long wooden tables under the soaring frescoes of Renaissance masters.

The papal election is one of the world’s oldest dramas, but this one is unlike any before it, with many cardinals appointed by Francis meeting one another for the first time. The new faces bring unfamiliar politics, priorities and concerns that some experts say could make the selection process more fragmented than usual. Francis also left the church deeply divided, with progressive factions pushing for more inclusion and change and conservatives seeking to roll things back, often under the guise of preserving unity.

Here’s what to know:

• How it works: The cardinals will participate in four rounds of voting every day until a candidate achieves a two-thirds majority. The ballots are burned after two rounds of voting, and the smoke above the Sistine Chapel signals whether a decision has been made — black smoke for no decision, white if there is a pope. There is no indication of how long it will take, though the last two conclaves reached decisions within two days.

• Possible successors: Predicting the outcome of a papal election is always challenging, but oddsmakers say that two top contenders are Cardinal Pietro Parolin of Italy, who was Francis’ second-in-command, and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, a country where the church is growing rapidly.

• Referendum on Francis: The election in many ways will turn on whether the cardinals want a pope who will follow Francis’ path of openness and inclusion or forge a different one. During his 12-year pontificate, Francis made global headlines for landmark declarations that encouraged liberals, including allowing the blessing of people in same-sex unions and raising his voice for migrants.

• Test your knowledge: How well do you know the process of selecting a pope? Take our conclave quiz.

The next vote by the 133 cardinals gathered in a conclave in Vatican City is expected to take place around 10:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. Eastern), and the second around noon.

If neither vote is successful, the next two ballots will take place around 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday.

Casting, reading and incinerating the secret ballots can take a while, so those times are only estimates.

The voting procedure is precisely choreographed. All 133 voting cardinals must write the name of the man he sees as pope on a rectangular piece of paper under the phrase “Eligo in Summum Pontificem,” or “I elect as the supreme pontiff.” Cardinals individually walk their ballots to the chapel’s altar, where they say an oath in Latin, and leave the ballot on a plate.

Votes are counted before being read aloud and pierced and tied together with a red string (the “Conclave” film depicted this practice). After ballots are counted, they are burned.

Smoke emerges from the Sistine Chapel up to twice a day, after the morning and afternoon sessions.

Both of the past two popes — Benedict XVI in 2005 and Francis in 2013 — were elected in two days. For the past two centuries, each pope was selected within four days or fewer.

The cardinal electors will take Sunday off for prayer if a pope has not been selected by Saturday afternoon.

Here’s a look at some of those objects, and the meaning behind them.

Voting Instruments

When the cardinals vote in the Sistine Chapel, they will be sitting in rows of simple wooden tables. At one end of the chapel, a large table is set up for those who run the voting, according to the Universi Dominici Gregis, or U.D.G., one of the documents used to govern the papal transition.

The room also contains voting instruments, including an urn to receive the ballots, a set of wooden balls, and a needle and twine. The urn is used to collect the ballots, rectangular pieces of paper printed with the Latin phrase “Eligo in Summum Pontificem” (“I elect as Supreme Pontiff”).

The ballots contain a space where each cardinal writes in the name of his chosen candidate. The ballots are placed in the urn and are removed for counting after all the cardinals have voted.

The wooden balls are used to keep track of the ballots. The balls have numbers written on them that correspond to the number of cardinals voting in the conclave. As the ballots are being counted, an attendant removes one of the wooden balls for each ballot, to ensure that the number matches the number of cardinals, according to The Catholic Advocate, formerly a newspaper of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J. If the numbers don’t match, the ballots must be burned without being read and another vote is conducted immediately, according to the U.D.G.

As the ballots are being read, they are pierced with the needle through the word “Eligo” and strung onto the thread, “so that the ballots can be more securely preserved,” according to the U.D.G.

The Oath of Secrecy

The conclave is a secretive institution, and many steps are taken to prevent leaks, including restricting the cardinals’ use of phones, the internet and newspapers.

The members of the College of Cardinals, the body that will elect the pope, must also swear and sign an oath of secrecy, according to the U.D.G. The oath reads, in part: “I will observe absolute and perpetual secrecy with all who are not part of the College of Cardinal electors concerning all matters directly or indirectly related to the ballots cast and their scrutiny for the election of the Supreme Pontiff.”

The cardinals also must promise not to record anything in Vatican City during the time of the election. The punishment for breaking the oath is “automatic” excommunication, according to the oath.

The Stove

The weekend before the conclave began, Vatican workers installed a simple stove in which ballots would be burned in the Sistine Chapel. Fire crews also installed a chimney on the roof of the chapel, where the smoke will leave the building.

After each round of voting, the ballots are mixed with chemicals that, when burned, emit either black or white smoke. Black smoke means that the cardinals have not yet reached the requisite majority; white smoke means that a new pope has been elected and voting is over.

The Seal

At the beginning of the conclave, the Apostolic Palace, which contains the Sistine Chapel, is closed to the public. On Wednesday, members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard placed beaded ropes with the guard’s seal at the entrances to the palace to ensure privacy and maintain secrecy for the cardinals.

The Vatican City government also planned to deactivate cellphone service within its territory for the duration of the conclave, starting on Wednesday afternoon.

The Papal Vestments

After a pope is elected, he is taken to the “Room of Tears,” a small room next to the Sistine Chapel, where he will put on the white papal cassock for the first time. Garments in three sizes are prepared and kept in the room, since no one knows who — or what size — the next pope will be.

The room is known as the “Room of Tears” because there are accounts of previous popes becoming overwhelmed with emotion in the room, and being moved to tears, after their election. After the pope puts on the vestments, he is introduced to the public for the first time.

Outside in St. Peter’s Square, thousands of the faithful, the curious and the vacationing gathered to await the news of whether the cardinals had managed to elect a papal successor. Word came at 9 p.m., in the form of black smoke billowing from a chimney installed last week on the roof of the chapel.

If the smoke had been white, it would have meant that the cardinals had chosen the first new pope in a dozen years in just one round of voting, a feat not seen for centuries.

But the black smoke, created when the cardinals’ ballots are incinerated in a cast-iron stove, means they’ll have to try again.

“We are cold, we’re hungry, we’re thirsty but yet we can’t move,” said the Rev. Peter Mangum, 61, a priest at the Church of Jesus the Good Shepherd in Monroe, La. He and three other priests had been in the square for about seven hours, and it was Father Mangum’s fourth time waiting for news of a new pope.

He had stood in the same spot for the elections of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis, and he wasn’t going to budge until he knew Wednesday’s news. “We had to make sure the smoke was black,” he said.

It took two days to elect Pope Francis in 2013 and Benedict XVI in 2005. No conclave in the 20th or 21st centuries has lasted more than five days.

In an era when news travels instantly around the world, the patience-requiring wait for the smoke in St. Peter’s Square is a ritual that dates back to the 19th century.

For some, the anxiety was intense. “I think there’s more nervousness among the people outside than among the cardinals themselves,” said Tania Radesca, who arrived at the square at 1 p.m.

Ms. Radesca, who is from Venezuela, had volunteered to help during the Jubilee, a year of pilgrimage that happens every 25 years, and she arrived in Rome just over a month ago. She was in St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday and caught a final glimpse of Pope Francis in his popemobile.

He died a day later.

Those who arrived early to score spots at the barricades closest to the front of St. Peter’s Basilica draped flags from their home countries along the barriers and befriended each other as they settled in. Others camped out on yoga mats or picnic blankets.

Many had traveled a long way, specifically for the conclave. Rodrigo Pinto, 43, a retired karate instructor, flew 23 hours from Guatemala, landing on Tuesday afternoon and heading straight to St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday so he could wait for the first sign of smoke.

Mr. Pinto, who was wearing a rosary, said, “I want to be a part of something I have always seen on TV, in documentaries, on the internet.” After standing in the rain in the morning and under the hot sun in the afternoon, he said, “Three hours ago, it was like hell. Sorry, St. Peter.”

In a post office inside the square, Jennifer Raulli, 54, wrote postcards to her college-age children in the United States. She was in Rome on vacation with one of her daughters, who just graduated from Texas Christian University, and had gotten tickets to see Pope Francis say Mass on Wednesday. Instead, they arrived at the square to wait for the smoke that might herald the man who replaces him.

“It is going to be a long couple of hours, but I would not miss it,” said Ms. Raulli, who had traveled from Pasadena, Calif. Ms. Raulli, who was raised Presbyterian and converted to Catholicism when she was 37, said she would prefer a “more conservative” pope because she would like the church to be “less politicized” and close to her vision of biblical teachings.

The day of waiting began at 10 a.m. when Giovanni Battista Re, the spry, 91-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals, presided over a Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica and implored the voting cardinals to choose “a pope who knows how best to awaken the consciences of all, and the moral and spiritual energies in today’s society.”

As the cardinals gave each other the sign of peace during the service, Cardinal Re hugged Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state under Francis and considered a leading candidate to succeed him. A microphone caught Cardinal Re wishing Cardinal Parolin best wishes.

Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, another potential candidate who appeared with a fresh haircut, warmly shook his peers’ hands. Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, the archbishop of Marseille and also considered a papal contender, stopped for a prayer in front of the reliquary containing the remains of Pope John XXIII — a hero to many liberal Catholics for his efforts to modernize the church.

After lunch at the Casa Santa Marta, the lodging house inside the Vatican where the electors will stay throughout the conclave, the cardinals walked to the Sistine Chapel. As they proceeded into the chapel, they chanted the Litany of the Saints, while a choir hauntingly invoked the names of the saints. The cardinals replied with “Ora pro nobis,” or “Pray for us.” Outside in the square, many watching on the large video screens flanking the basilica swayed and echoed the cardinals’ chant.

Inside the Sistine Chapel, name tags for the cardinals had been placed on the long tables where they would vote. Francis named many more cardinals than his two predecessors, some from countries far from the Vatican, and many of the papal electors — and potential popes — do not know one another.

Around 5:45 p.m., Archbishop Diego Giovanni Ravelli, the master of pontifical liturgical celebrations, announced “extra omnes,” a Latin phrase that means “everybody out.” The giant wooden doors were closed, leaving the 133 cardinal electors — those under the age of 80 who can vote in the secret ballot — locked inside.

The cardinals will not be allowed to leave the Vatican until a two-thirds majority agrees on the next pope. Phones, internet, television and any contact from outside the Vatican walls are prohibited, a custom enforced to discourage the process from dragging on.

Some veteran electors believed there would be prolonged voting. “Bring a book,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York said he advised other cardinals, in an interview on Tuesday.

The conclave began 16 days after Francis’ death on April 21.

The significance of the moment was not lost even on those who had little knowledge of Catholicism.

Yuichiro Yamakoshi, 41, a Japanese tourist traveling with his wife, said that after touring the Vatican museums and walking through the doors of the four main basilicas that are usually open only during the Jubilee, he started to understand the power and influence of the faith. Although the couple had come to St. Peter’s Square on Tuesday with a guide, they returned on Wednesday morning for a commemorative photo marking the conclave.

As the black smoke dissipated into the sky, all there was to do was wait for another day.

Of all the people coincidentally in Rome for the start of the papal conclave on Wednesday, the pilgrims from St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Houston may have had among the most poignant stories. The 47 faithful who had traveled with their priest — also coincidentally named Francis — to Rome this week had scheduled a meeting with Pope Francis on Wednesday. Instead, they were in St. Peter’s Square during the final Mass before the conclave beginning later in the day.

One of the group, George Smith, 69, said, “It is a blessing for us.”

As a river of people streamed out of the square, a group of Romans who had been convinced the smoke would be white shook hands and hugged. “See you tomorrow!” they said.

Reporting was contributed by Emma Bubola, Elisabetta Povoledo, Jason Horowitz, Elizabeth Dias, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Bernhard Warner and Josephine de La Bruyère.

“We want to work with the next pope to put an end to clerical abuse,” Peter Isely, a member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, said Wednesday at a news conference.

In March, the group launched a website tracking each cardinal’s record in dealing with credible allegations against priests under his watch. Few in the upper echelons of the church’s hierarchy are without blame, the group claimed.

On Friday, Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, said the cardinals had discussed sexual abuse in the run-up to the conclave and considered it a “wound to be kept open” so awareness of the problem remained alive and solutions could be identified.

SNAP also presented a road map for the pope’s first 100 days, describing steps its members think he should take to resolve the crisis.

SNAP is only one of several survivors groups to have arrived in Rome since Pope Francis died on April 21, hoping their message will resonate with the cardinals.

One international group, Ending Clergy Abuse, or ECA, echoed Martin Luther’s radical 1517 call for church reform on Tuesday evening when it brought a manifesto — titled the 95 Theses of Survivors — to the front door of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that handles most abuse cases. They did not nail it to the door, but tried to slip it between the doors.

“I rang the doorbell but they didn’t answer,” said Gemma Hickey, the president of ECA, who is a survivor of abuse. It was not until they started reading the document out loud that the door opened and an official took it. “He didn’t say anything, but it was received, so I was happy with that, even if it was just symbolic.”

Francesco Zanardi, the founder of Rete L’Abuso, Italy’s largest survivors’ group, said at a news conference on Tuesday that the church laws promoted by Pope Francis to guide bishops in handling abuse were often thwarted in Italy because national laws do not force bishops to report cases of abuse to law enforcement officials.

Speaking out against clerical abuse is not always without consequence. Ann Hagan Webb and Anne Barrett Doyle, of BishopAccountability.org, an archive and advocacy group, said the police stopped them when they were walking near the Vatican office that handles abuse cases holding photos of two cardinals whose records on punishing abusers have drawn scrutiny.

“They told us we couldn’t carry signs,” Ms. Barrett Doyle said. The police officers took photos of their documents and called other police officers before letting them go after about 45 minutes. “At least they didn’t arrest us,” she said.

Under Pope Francis, the Vatican took decidedly stronger steps than it had in the past to counter sexual abuse.

Francis issued the church’s most comprehensive law yet to hold clerics accountable if they sexually abused children or vulnerable adults, or if they covered up abuse. And he apologized to survivors on many occasions, acknowledging their pain. But critics have said that the measures were not enough and often were not applied because of resistance within the church.

The ambience at Santa Marta isn’t much of a draw, either. Its cafeteria has pale green columns, utilitarian furniture and fan art in the hallway depicting Francis as a Jedi knight in “Star Wars.” But priests would angle for a reservation there because Santa Marta was the home of Pope Francis. Until he began ailing and taking his meals in his room, the pope often ate in the cafeteria at a table between the window and the refrigerator.

Among the residents of the guesthouse, Francis, with his emphasis on simple living and humility, bore some blame for the decline in the food. Some lamented bland vegetables, less-than-rich pastas and leftovers from gifts to the pope — a box of dates from the Middle East, for example.

Across the ideological spectrum, a consensus emerged.

“You don’t eat very well,” said Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi of Italy, a supporter of Pope Francis.

“It’s not so good,” said Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Germany, who was fired by Francis.

The food at the conclave isn’t supposed to be good.

The tradition of locking in the cardinals began in the 13th century, after residents of Viterbo, a town north of Rome where the election was being held, grew so frustrated with the process, which was taking years, that they ripped the roof off the building where the cardinals were meeting and reduced the menu to bread and water. The pope who came out of that election, Gregory X, decreed in 1274 that after three days of conclave, cardinals would get only one meal a day. The more days they took, the less food they got.

But election menus improved. Centuries later, conclave food deliveries were inspected for secret messages — easily stuffable pies and chickens were verboten — and passed to the cardinals through a revolving door.

When a 16th-century cardinal died during a conclave, some others claimed the food was poisoned. In the conclave that lasted from November 1549 to February 1550, the famed Vatican cook Bartolomeo Scappi noted that cardinals took turns acting as poison testers. Once it was clear the food was safe, they drank from carafes of wine and ate from hampers full of food.

Scappi doesn’t say exactly what he fed them, but Crystal King, the author of a novel about the chef, wrote that her research led her to conclude they ate “ravioli and rabbit pappardelle” and “cheesy breads, veal croquettes, roasted bear, grilled beef ribs, open-faced mushroom crostatas, pheasant in red-currant sauce and maybe even caviar omelets.”

Times have changed, and though Santa Marta is not exactly serving bread and water, the cardinals preparing to vote for the next pope know not to bring their appetites.

“We will eat whatever they give us,” Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Congo said on Sunday. When told by a reporter about a subpar dining experience at the Santa Marta mess hall, he joked, “And you’re not dead.” He said that one had to have “trust in the Holy Spirit.”

In “Behind Locked Doors,” a 2003 history of papal elections, Frederic J. Baumgartner wrote that the first evidence he found of smoke being used as a signal in a papal election was from 1823. The cardinals’ ballots were burned in previous conclaves, he wrote, but there was no record that the smoke was intended to inform the outside world of a new pope.

The smoke comes from the burning of the ballots, as well as any notes that the cardinals have taken, which are placed in a cast-iron stove after each round of voting. (One round is held the first day, and four each day from then on, with two in the morning and two in the afternoon.) The ballots are burned after two rounds of voting, unless a pope is chosen.

Until this century, wet straw was added to the stove to create the smoke’s white color. But it wasn’t always reliable.

As The New York Times reported, during the 1958 conclave, white smoke seemed to appear twice during the second day of voting. That created confusion because, in fact, a pope had not yet been selected.

A Times reporter described the frenzy outside St. Peter’s: “Dozens of newspapermen in the square made a dash for the nearest telephone,” and guests at a wedding inside the basilica dashed outside, “leaving the bride and bridegroom alone in front of a priest at the altar.”

But it was a false alarm. The confusion in that conclave, which elected Pope John XXIII, led to conspiracy theories that another cardinal had been the real winner.

In 1978, cartridges were first used to enhance the black or the white color of the smoke during the conclave that elected John Paul I. When he died suddenly 33 days after he was elected, the cartridges were used again in the election that year of his successor, John Paul II.

That method was also imperfect science. In the case of John Paul I, an amusing video from the time shows befuddled reporters panicking as white smoke from the chimney turns black. “You can’t understand anything,” one frazzled reporter screams into a telephone. The Vatican later announced that a pope had been elected.

By 2005, when John Paul II died, a more reliable system was devised that remains in use today. An electronic control unit resembling a stove is now placed alongside the cast-iron stove — they share a chimney flue — to burn cartridges that color the smoke from the ballots.

Massimiliano De Sanctis, a fireworks expert, customized one of his fireworks machines for the Vatican, and it was used for the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict XVI and the 2013 conclave that elected Francis.

“We didn’t invent anything new,” he said in an interview. “It’s the system used for fireworks.”

The black or white smoke cartridges are placed in the unit, and when the ballots are burned in the cast-iron stove, a cardinal presses a button to set off the cartridges in the unit, coloring the smoke. For each vote, six cartridges are used, and the smoke lasts about seven minutes, Mr. De Sanctis said.

After the confusion of the past, the Vatican doesn’t take chances: Once white smoke comes out of the chimney, bells will begin pealing from St. Peter’s Basilica, calling other churches in Rome to ring their bells as well.

During the last conclave in 2013, as millions focused their gaze on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, a sea gull landed on the chimney’s metal cover at an opportune moment.

Was it a symbol? A blessing? A sign? Would the white bird signify white smoke?

“That seagull on the Sistine Chapel roof by the conclave is great product placement for the Holy Spirit,” James Martin, a Jesuit priest, posted on Twitter at the time.

The sea gull quickly became the most famous bird in the world. A social media account aptly named the Sistine Seagull was created almost immediately.

“I can see them voting from up here, btw,” the account posted on Twitter, using an abbreviation for “by the way.” “Anybody has any questions, just ask.”

The sea gull remained on the chimney for about 40 minutes.

About an hour after the bird flew away, white smoke emerged from the chimney. Pope Francis had been chosen.

The Sistine Chapel is named after Sixtus IV, who became pope in 1471 and commissioned its construction as the primary chapel of the papal court. It has been posited, though there are skeptics, that the chapel’s dimensions — 131 feet by 42 feet, with ceilings 65 feet high — were meant to recall the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem as described in the Old Testament, Ms. Jatta said.

Between 1481 and 1483, Sixtus hired some of the greatest artists of the time — Perugino, Botticelli, Signorelli and Ghirlandaio — to fresco the walls of the chapel, which Ms. Jatta said is “symbolic of our faith, our art and our history.” The frescos depict scenes from the lives of Jesus Christ and Moses.

When Julius II, the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, became pope in 1503, he began an ambitious building program that included revamping St. Peter’s Basilica and completing the Sistine Chapel.

In 1508, he brought in Michelangelo to paint the Sistine’s vault, replacing a previous fresco depicting a starry sky. Working alone on a platform and craning his neck while standing, as a sketched self-portrait shows, Michelangelo painted nine scenes from the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, and nude figures (known as ignudi), prophets and sybils. It took him four years.

Michelangelo later received a commission from Pope Clement VII to paint the wall behind the altar with a rendering of the Last Judgment. In his biography of Michelangelo, Giorgio Vasari wrote that Clement VII had wanted him to paint the work “so that he could demonstrate in this scene all that the art of design was capable of achieving.”

Michelangelo hadn’t been thrilled by the gig. He considered himself a sculptor first and foremost, “but the pope called him and he was a faithful person,” said Ralf van Bühren, who teaches art history at the Santa Croce Pontifical University in Rome. In “The Last Judgment,” Michelangelo depicted a self-portrait in the skin of flayed St. Bartholomew, to show “he suffered so much, he didn’t like to paint,” he said.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about “The Last Judgment,” with some clerics complaining that too many figures were nude. But Paul III, who became pope in 1534, was a fan. It is said that he fell on his knees, his eyes filling with tears, when the fresco was unveiled in 1541.

Some believe the art will serve as inspiration to the cardinal electors as they gather beneath the frescoes.

“The contemplation of these images evokes the spiritual responsibility of their vote,” Ms. Jatta said.

For the conclave, carpenters built a raised, beige-carpeted platform about two feet above the original floor so that it will be level with the second step leading to the altar. Running the length of the chapel are long tables where the cardinals will sit on cherry wood chairs marked with their names.

The Sistine Chapel has been temporarily closed for days, disappointing tourists who may have planned to visit before Pope Francis’ death on April 21 set the succession process in motion.

Last year, about 7 million visitors trooped through the Sistine Chapel, Ms. Jatta said. The chapel is “hyper monitored” with sensors, she said, and equipped with special lighting and an energy efficient air-conditioning system to minimize wear and tear on the space.

• Scrutineers: Three cardinals who oversee the entire process.

• Infirmarii: Three cardinals who collect the votes of any electors who are sick (though none was believed to be ill as of Wednesday).

• Revisers: Three cardinals who double-check the ballots at the end of each round of voting.

The cardinals, sitting at long tables inside the Sistine Chapel, each receive rectangular pieces of paper printed with the Latin phrase “Eligo in Summum Pontificem,” or, “I elect as the supreme pontiff.” Beneath that, they write the name of their choice for pope.

The 1996 conclave rules specify that the vote must be secret and the candidate’s name legible, “taking care not to write other names as well, since this would make the ballot null.”

One by one, the cardinals walk with their ballot toward the chapel’s altar. Facing the eastern wall, which is decorated with Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment,” each cardinal utters an oath, in Latin: “I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected.”

Then the cardinal places the ballot on a plate and slides it into an urn, traditionally a large chalice.

After all the cardinals have voted, one of the scrutineers mixes the ballots by shaking the chalice. Then the votes are counted individually and placed into a second container. The number of ballots and voters have to match; otherwise, the vote is void.

The ballots are then opened and read by all three scrutineers. The third one announces the name out loud, and records it.

Once the votes have been tallied, a scrutineer pierces each ballot with a needle and threads them together with a red string. After the revisers check the count, the ballots are burned.

Except for the first day, when there is only one vote, two votes take place every morning and two every afternoon, until two-thirds of the cardinals agree on the choice.