Is there a canonical description of what a voting sigil looks like that one would carry to Tribunal? I've often imagined it resembling a chess piece or carved statuette. However Wikipedia describes magical sigils as being a special seal or calligraphic signature. Alternately it might be an amulet or badge of some kind. Any references in the canon or personal thoughts?
The reason I ask is I'm thinking of making / buying a physical representation for my players to vote with during their covenant council meetings. To facilitate simultaneous reveal of voting results (e.g. no one knows ahead of time whether you vote yea or nay) I'm thinking of a palm sized medallion with a inscribed image of the mage's sigil on one size ("Yea") and blank back ("Nay"). Players could place it before themselves with their palm covering it and reveal at the same time.
Romans cast ballots using "tabella" which were marked with letters for the different kind of votes (in favor/against, or so on). Since the voting sigil of each magus is unique to him, however, I've always imagined him adding his personal "tablet" to the urn marked "In favor" or "Against". Each voting sigil will be a unique item identified with the magus through the registers of Houses Mercere and Guernicus and personal familiarity, but traditionally I'd imagine it to be a a small tablet containing a magical sigil / symbol much like that linked to above, and in a distinctive Hermetic style that carries symbolic symbolism much like Heraldry does for mundanes; that same sigil/symbol would also be adorning the magus' sanctum entrance, warning off intruders that this is a mage's personal sanctum.
One of the magi is MoH uses a sigil which is a wicked looking dagger. After many years, and as a peaceful Flambeau, he's become ashamed of it.
Tremere have a branch of wood which they present to their masters as their sigil. It fits the militant nature of that house that all Tremere have similar sigils, but an SG might allow a Tremere who carries his own sigil to customize it.
In our last Ars game, which was a LARP of the Stonehenge Tribunal of 1208, some of the magi had made their sigils out of modeling clay.
Personally, I've always pictured voting sigils as something like large playing cards (or flash cards), made of something sturdy (like tile) with a symbolic representation of the magus on one side.
However, in many of the pbp games I've seen and played in, voting sigils have tended to be...rather imaginative. Pieces of amber with a flower embedded in them, a sextant, a miniature cauldron, a large dagger. Basically (to my eye), large unwieldy things that would be a total bear to count if you ever had to have a "secret ballot" type thing where you put your voting sigil in one urn or the other and whichver urn has the most sigils wins.