not know how the higher classes voted. Voters were called one after the other in descending order of their tax payments. The voter named one or two candidates depending on the number of electors to be chosen in the class. An absolute majority of those voting was required for election. If an absolute majority was not achieved, those men not yet elected who had the most votes were placed on a runoff ballot, twice as many of them as there were electors still to be elected. In most cases the electors won by a large majority. Those men elected had to declare their acceptance or rejection of the election immediately, if present, otherwise within three days, including election day. If an elector who was not present rejected the results, a by-election was held a few days later. In 1906, in cities with a population of 50,000 or more, the electoral assembly was replaced by the time-limit voting that is now common practice, allowing voters to cast their ballots within a specified period of time. Electoral districts (constituencies) The electors of a constituency gathered on a uniform national day at a polling place in their constituency, established by law in 1860, to elect members of parliament. Usually there were several hundred electors in a constituency, in some cases well over 1,000. One to three deputies were elected in each constituency, although before 1860 there were constituencies with more. In 1860, 176 electoral districts were established by law. The electoral districts always comprised one or more entire city or county districts; only Berlin was divided into several electoral districts. Apart from minor shifts in district boundaries, there was only one change to these constituencies before a law of 1906 that was effective with the 1908 election. Under its terms, several constituencies with particularly large population growth were divided into smaller constituencies and a total of 10 additional seats were allocated to these areas (Greater Berlin 5, Ruhr 4, and Upper Silesia 1). Otherwise, the only changes in constituency division were additional constituencies for areas annexed to Prussia after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 (Hanover, Hesse-Nassau, and Schleswig-Holstein in 1867, and Lauenburg in 1876). In the long term, a trend toward more single-member constituencies can be observed: The classes, which were only minimally adjusted for population changes, further favored the conservatives, since their deputies came mainly from eastern and rural parts of the