It seems appropriate that the place where the most critical decisions are made on the planet today, shares the greatest number of voters, even if they live in a different world.

that accuracy is more important than speed. It really doesn't matter if we get the results 30 minutes quicker. We want them accurate.

But the logistics and reality of it is impossible.

Who would count the votes? How would you assure that those people are fair, honest, and are counting the ballots as they are marked and not according to their own political beliefs? One person from each party? How would you vet the Democrat to make sure that they aren't a paid plant by the republicans? What happens if the republican counter or the Democrat counter doesn't show up due to an illness or other emergency? Do you now recruit secondary and tertiary vote counters from each party, and vet them all?

How would you get these people to count the votes? It is nearly impossible for most precincts in this country to staff their polls with people who work the shift as it is, you honestly believe people would volunteer for another 4-5 hours of ballot counting?

The idea that ballots can be "counted by hand in a matter of minutes or a couple of hours at the most" is, ludicrous. Ballots are more than just the presidential ballot. On my upcoming election ballot there are at least 20 races being held. Each race would have to be evaluated and recorded by at least 2 people (one from each political party). If you think that you can evaluate a ballot properly and record the vote in seconds (which is what would be required for "minutes or a couple of hours at most&quot then you have no grasp on reality.

How would the votes be recorded and delivered to the SoS? Any method used could be open to manipulation and accusations of tampering. Hand recording by tally on a piece of paper? The recorder put too many tallies in X candidates column! Microsoft excel spreadsheet? Microsoft is a big business and made Excel knowingly switch election results! There is no way to possibly secure every stage of the election process in a world where people want to see corrupt and evil motives on the part of every single person who handles the election results when their candidate does not win.

So the idea that we can hand count ballots and move away from optical scanners or voting machines is at best naive, and at worst delusional. It isn't going to happen, and those on the DU who keep jumping on this bandwagon aren't thinking ny farther than the feelgoodness of the illusion of fairness that comes with hand counted ballots.

Yes.

I think what you say is bullshit. We've done it before. The paper ballot can be traced.

they could very easily be re-counted.

And I would suggest that for federal elections there be a common ballot type.

Simple paper ballot.

No hanging chad bullshit.

So people, effectively, have to vote twice?

Yeah, that'll go over great.

What is a "simple paper ballot"? One with fill in bubbles? What if a disabled voted can't hold a pencil to fill in their bubbles? Will you appoint a helper to help them vote? Who vouches for the integrity of the helper? You see? It's a lot more complicated that some make it out to be.

So we are going to hand recount if there is nay question of "hanky-panky?" Who is going to be empaneled to recount the votes? The same poll counters that we just accused of being corrupt? Perhaps the corporate owned media can sit around a table and recount them? Who do you trust enough to count your vote?

the same type of ballot when federal elections are being run.

How does one institute a standardized ballot without running afoul of the constitution, which leaves the voting process and guidelines to each state?

I GUARANTEE that your very participation in this board would draw objections from republican counters on their side. The hyper-partisanship that being a member of the DU is a sign of, would disqualify you. And rest assured, the republican machine would dig up every single post you've ever made, and every single parking ticket or crime you've ever been charged with as an excuse to eliminate you as unqualified.

Because you, as the Democrat counter, would feel the exact same way about a freeper being your counterpart; he cannot be trusted and will attempt to manipulate the process.

So who would be left if the hyper-partisan are removed from the pool? Only the great squishy middle. And they WON'T volunteer for 4-5 hours of ballot counting.

Well, you're a member, aren't you? Are you "hyper-partisan"?

i've done it, in excess of 14 years now. can't do it this year due to health. but if i could, i would.

people may not be lining up -- and voting really should be on the weekend -- but i absolutely agree with you that 'yes, we can'.

Seriously, is there something wrong with the tried and true method of accounting which requires confirmation of the number you entered?

Eyes on paper ballots, counted by machines, engenders CONFIDENCE in the election results. Something this country has been lacking for a very long time.

We have an electronic ballot that is printed out and stored for future reference, and we have the digital record.

Who performs the recount? Is the panel I described above gathered and vetted? Are they already chosen and vetted ahead of time? So they count the ballots and the results are off by a percentage - lets say .5%. Which result do we certify? Is the machine correct or are the humans prone to error and emotion correct? What if it has no effect on the race? Does that mean the machines were correct?

But to really foul things up requires a computer."

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/07/foul-computer/

Look, we used to do this just fine. Hand counting. Easy.

Almost every precinct in the US is under 1000 ballots. Not hard to count 1000 ballots by hand. At all.

On election night. No certification, no announcements, no counts released until the hand count is finished.

No "printed" ballot by the computer, hand marked paper ballots used with a scanner.

No one goes home until the counts match.

1000 ballots at 1 minute each (which I think is actually a ridiculously small amount of time) is 16 hours 40 minutes.

So we double up on our fully vetted teams and end up with 8 hours 20 minutes.

Let's assume we can get 3 teams to count that brings us down to about 5.5 hours.

So you are going to empanel people to count ballots for 5 hours after an election that generally ends at 8:00 PM? Are these going to be different poll workers than have worked the polls all day long? Will you pay these people to perform this job, and if so, don't you think this will raise objections from people as to why vote counters are now paid employees of the election board?

So no one goes home until the votes match? How long will you keep these teams? 10 hours? 20 hours? If multiple counts are required do we just keep tired, fatigued people present until they all just give up and agree that the counts are verified?

There are a million pitfalls to this "simple" idea of hand counting votes. Too many people think it's just as simple as saying "YEAH! HAND COUNTS!" when it is FAR more complicated than that.

Because you just might to want to research the Georgia hand count which was done.

It will prove exactly who's right or wrong here.

Knowledge......it does a body good!

Don't leave me hanging if your wisdom has all the answers. Share.

On my way out the door.

I Googled the shit out of this "Georgia hand count" noise and got nothing.

If you are so confident and know what you are talking about, render some assistance.

...for those nearly 200 years before we had voting machines and optical scanners? I mean, the sheer logistics of counting votes is overwhelming!

Puhleeze.

In 1960, the voter turnout was the highest in the last 40 years at 63.1%.

The turnout for that election was 68,329,000 voters.

In 2008 President Obama got more votes than that BY HIMSELF. John McSame got another 59,900,000 votes.

So you see, even with voter turnout 7% lower than in 1960 we had far more voters - almost twice as many.

Hand counting may have been perfectly acceptable when the nation was far smaller - now it's unfeasible and opens the country up to tens of thousands of points of contention - every precinct being questioned.

...is that much harder than counting 1000?

Puhleeze.

Do the math. If you take 1 minute per ballot (which I think is an unreasonably small amount of time) that is 16 man hours to count 1000. If you ran 2 fully vetted teams that's 8 hours. Are you going to spend those 8 hours counting ballots after the polls close at 8:00 pm? Perhaps they should wait until the next morning so corrupt poll workers can tamper with them.

It's math. Use it.

OMG!!!!!

So on average a precinct has around 1000 votes. Let's allow 1.5 minutes on average per ballot as a worst-case scenario, that's 24 person-hours for an average precinct. So it might be next morning before we would know the results for that precinct. 4 people, 6 hours, is that really so awful?

Yes, indeed, someone will spend the time counting those ballots. Do you think that no ones hangs around after the polls close at 8:00pm as it is now? No matter how they are counted there is work to be done to finalize the vote counts.

Of course, right now they pay the companies for the use of the machines. They pay people to manage the machines, to ensure they are not tampered with, etc. They pay more if something goes wrong and there has to be a "recount" (if you can really call it that), or if there is a problem with the machine or the software. The people they pay to troubleshoot problems, get paid more than those who simply count ballots. Furthermore, that can really take longer than just counting the paper ballots would have -- and you may never have an accurate count.

As for the "corrupt poll workers", in most precincts the vote counters have people from both parties in order to protect the integrity of the process. And you do not seem to account for other potential points of corruption: to wit, the programmers themselves, or their bosses; or those who manage the machines; or the possibility that machines may be hacked by some external party (some of them actually maintain connections to the internet), etc. And those points of corruption may be a lot harder to detect than with paper ballots. We do, after all, have a lot of experience with how to handle paper ballots.

I'm not seeing a big issue here, certainly not one that outweighs the benefits of voter-verified paper ballots.

Boots on the ground will take care of audits as needed. If it needs to happen- it can and will. Thats a huge deterrent.

Why are you do hell bent to dissuade people?

I'm not sure of or where worked election day because there are usually a huge volunteer effort election day if there's much at all at stake. It's not that hard to find them. Where are you exactly that has so little civic participation in elections?

Both the city and the rural precincts are always hurting for people to work them - always. A few years back two of the women who had been working the polls for years happened to die in the same year - it damn near closed the precinct.

If this is a localized effect, I would be highly shocked. I've been hearing reports for YEARS that poll workers are in short supply.

Why am I "hell bent" on dissuading people from a fantasy? because it's a fantasy. It's full of legal and logistical pitfalls. Anyone who takes 5 minutes to really think about it should come to the same conclusion. Most of the people on DU exist in this little bubble of anti-reality where we'll just say hand counting ballots is the best and ONLY way to have an election, and the minor details will work themselves out. Well that IS NOT THE CASE. The devil, as they say, is IN THOSE DETAILS. There is no simple solution to voting. If it was as simple as hand counting, we never would have gotten away from it. But it isn't that simple.

I know others here are doing it too- but at least they want a paper trail. I've worked enough election days to know hand counts and recounts aren't always needed- as I said when big things are at stake - there are boots on the ground to be part of the process.
A paper trail is all that matters, what we have now is not subject to verification and seriously problematic.

I don't think that every vote needs to be hand counted the first time, but I believe there needs to be a hard copy of each vote that can be reviewed if there are questions/concerns about the voting.

It seem so simple to me, even for touch screen machines.

1) You select your candidate
2) You're give the opppoturnity to review choices
3) If you agree these are your choices, a receipt is printed out with those choices
4) You're asked, on screen, if the printed information is correct.
5) If no, you alert the precinct election officials and the machine is pulled out of service until the problem is found/fixed.
6) If yes, the vote is recorded, and you place your printed vote in a locked ballot box.

The printed votes would only need to be reviewed if a hand recount was called for.

And it has to be coming from people who either don't believe or don't care that fraud can happen. It's bullshit.
The world would not end if every election tally too a few more hours to count.
Other people do it, we used to - and we can go back.

the same likelihood as in-person voter fraud.

ZERO.

Unless the paper record used in a recount is certified by the individual voter to be an authentic record of his or her vote, then the paper trail is meaningless. Look, if a machine can be hacked such that it can improperly register a vote, that same machine can be hacked such that it also produces an after-the-fact record of that improper vote. That's the problem with "paper trails."

I'm an IT person, and I'm all for returning to paper, hand-counted ballots, in part because I know exactly how easy it is to hack these things.

I may be missing something on the other side of the debate but I think that anyone who disagrees with this method is ok with votes being manipulated.

That being said, the counting should be recorded and the folks doing it should be members if the precinct - no outside influence.


The cumulative results need to be posted online so that the vote counters can verify that the right number shown at the state level.

There was life before machines, you know?

...the number of ballots is only one element. The other is the SIZE of the ballot. Here in New York we'll be voting for President, US Senator, US Representative, State Senator and State Assemblyman. Now your counting time has increased 5X. Add to that other State and Local races in other States. Add to THAT the innumerable referenda that States like California have. Now how long does it take?

it would be a price worth paying to have trustworthy voting outcomes. Highly preferable to an "instant" wrong outcome.


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...is because that's what the audience wants.

Mostly because it's newsy, but also there's a countervailing theory that, the longer it takes to report the numbers, the more time there is to fix them...

before we go to vote on the computer. Paper ballot is not that difficult once you have looked over it. And you have the same ballot on the computer, just your vote is tabulated differently. There is no difference in the ballot.

The ballot becomes a tablet with one page per question. Then separate the pages for counting.

this doesn't speed up the counting...

There are around 450 voters in my precinct.

That's very interesting.

I'm challenging the assertion that a small enough precinct can allow both accuracy and quick tally.

when you vote.

All the issues are worded the same as the paper ballot. The only thing different is that it is tabulated by a computer. Of course, all the results from every computer has to be tabulated separately, just as if you had your small pocket calculator.

Turn the counting over to the sixth grade. Talk about a civics lesson!