A person accustomed to coloring lantern slides could then immediately color in one of the map slides according to some key, so the colors red, green, yellow, etc., on different areas would show that certain candidates were ahead in those States or districts. For municipal elections, the wards and different divisions of the city could be colored in exactly the same manner as suggested for the States. The appearance of the suggested map as thrown on a screen may be judged somewhat from the map seen in Fig. 177. It would add much to the enthusiasm of the crowd if it were announced before election day that some well-known person would make the summary estimates from which the colored slides would be prepared. It would probably take less than fifteen minutes to color a lantern slide after the summary had been made up by the person watching the telegrams, and it would be feasible to show on the slide itself the hour at which the slide "went to press", as 9.30 p.m., 9.45 p.m., etc. As a new slide could be prepared about every fifteen minutes, a map summary shown on the screen need be only about fifteen minutes behind the latest telegraphic reports.

In addition to the actual colored map, each slide should contain colored bars which would show by their length the estimated summary

342 GRAPHIC METHODS

of all the States or districts, so that the totals of different candidates might be easily compared. Thus, in a presidential election, the counting of the number of States for each candidate does not by any means give the whole story. The important thing is the number of electoral votes, and these would be best represented by the bar summary which would take into account the number of electoral votes of each State estimated as won by any candidate.