> it allowed the high frequency traders to peek at the ballots others were sending in to the newspaper before they arrived, in turn giving them the ability to c

> it allowed the high frequency traders to peek at the ballots others were sending in to the newspaper before they arrived, in turn giving them the ability to cast their votes using information not yet available to the rest of the market. From what I gathered from Lewis's book, the crux of the problem is that people were doing their trades in multiple exchanges and that HFTs were simply noting trades in the fastest exchanges to reach (like BATS) and using that information in exchanges that were farther away. To take his analogy, it would be like using the results published in another newspaper the day before to determine your ballot choice.