  Motivated by an attempt to develop a method for solving initial value
problems in a class of one dimensional periodic cellular automata (CA)
associated with crystal bases and soliton equations, we consider a
generalization of a simple proposition in elementary mathematics. The original
proposition says that any sequence of letters 1 and 2, having no less 1's than
2's, can be changed into a ballot sequence via cyclic shifts only. We
generalize it to treat sequences of cells of common capacity s > 1, each of
them containing consecutive 2's (left) and 1's (right), and show that these
sequences can be changed into a ballot sequence via two manipulations, cyclic
and "quasi-cyclic" shifts. The latter is a new CA rule and we find that various
kink-like structures are traveling along the system like particles under the
time evolution of this rule.
