The following is in via ZASM (Zen & the Art of Synthesizer Maintenance).
"Since it’s a matter of occasional confusion, even amongst people doing synth repairs for a living, I thought I might try a simple description of how divide-down polyphony in analogue instruments works.
"The basis of the technology is a circuit called a frequency divider. [1] This can be done differently with digital manipulation, but a typical analogue frequency divider responds to a (significant enough) change in input voltage by waiting until a similar change recurs one or more times before changing its output. The simplest and commonest division is the one-half or first suboctave, where the count is every two cycles. (A binary divider. n.b. divider circuits are often also known as counters.)"
You can find the full post at https://zasm.earth/dividers
