I’m glad I vote on paper here, but it’s still read by a black box scanning machine so I have no idea what happens in there. But, I’d have no idea what happens anywhere after I turn in my ballot.
We’ll need to depend on the state election officials to hold the line, and call for a new election if the they find the machines are compromised.
The “secret” to both quick and accurate counting is to use machine counting - not counting by humans.
Want to prove it to yourself? Here’s a simple test to perform:
Purchase a 500 sheet ream of blank printer paper.
Count the sheets in it.
Bet you won’t come up with 500. Count them again; again, I bet you won’t come up with 500 and I bet you won’t come up with the same number as the first time you counted them.
Or even faster, visually split them into 5 stacks of 100. Assumes constant thickness, but then make them even by moving pages from the highest ones to the lowest ones until they are all identical. If you can’t make them all identical, then you don’t have 500.
Then split one of the 100s into 5 again the same way.
Then pick up one of the stacks of 20 and count it to confirm it is 20.
Or for an arbitrary number of sheets, do the same but then set aside any sheets that won’t even up (because the stack isn’t an even multiple of whatever number you divide it into). Then you just have to count the final stack, multiply that to compensate for the splitting (for that layer), add the set aside sheets (for that layer), then move on to the previous layer of splitting and repeat.
Or, count out 20 sheets, then measure their thickness, then measure the thickness of the entire stack, divide by the 20 thickness, multiply by 20, though this one will have some error due to the measurements not being exact (even if you use calipers, paper does compress a bit, which complicates exact measurements).
Let’s see, Pennsylvania had ~5,000,000 votes cast in 2022 per ballotpedia.org for senator. That would mean ~500,000 stacks of 10.
You’re sure everyone of them has exactly 10 sheets; not 9 or 11 or 8 even? They never get knocked off the table, mixed up, etc?
And remember, all parties need to count all of the ballots independently from each other - can’t trust a party to count their own candidates ballots ;-). And I’m certain we want every party to come up with the exact same count for each candidate.
Looks like (from the same reference above), that there were 7 candidates running for senator in that election. Five of which received any votes (guess the 2 write-in candidates didn’t even vote for themselves 🤷). So that’s 5M x 7 counts = 35M ballots to count . . . by hand . . . for just one mid-sized state.
And also, there is almost always more than one race on a ballot (I usually see more like 10+ on mine). So, are you going to count them once (in stacks of 10) - tallying 10+ races per ballot? Or do you plan to count them 10+ times (once for each race)?
With all due respect, I can’t see that being in any way practical even given an army of very careful people with multiple months of time.
It most certainly can, and did so until the advent of electronic voting.
The trick is production line counting: multiple people (3 - 5) count every single vote, while each counter has a watcher, handing each ballot off to the next counter for verification in production line style, and others all watch the room and everything in it. All political parties are represented; all watchers and counters are observed and switched up; everyone in the room has both the right and the responsibility to speak up about any anomaly, and they do.
Even when electronic counting gets fucked up, like in Palm Beach County in 2000, manual counting was still used. Remember butterfly ballots and hanging chads? The counting rooms in Palm Beach County worked every ballot in exactly this way, and at the time, night after night, the evening news was full of videos of watching them do it.
I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it is absolutely possible and even common to manually count ballots rapidly in such a way that not a single vote gets missed. We did it for over two hundred years in the US, and that’s how it was in the 90s before electronic counting became a thing.
All you’re really telling the rest of us is that you don’t know the history or the mechanics of voting.
It can be made accurate, with the right checks and balances. And that’s what most countries do. You can’t argue it’s impossible, because it’s done all the time.
The link below lists some of the systems countries use to ensure election integrity and accurate counts. Some of these are only available if you use paper ballots and count by hand.
I tried to pick one of the largest population countries I could from the lists on that site - I chose the UK for this example.
Well, according to this website www.electoralcommission.org.uk, which appears to be the official government website for such things in the UK. I don’t see where more than 1 person counts each ballot.
Also, this page www.electoralcommission.org.uk seems to say: 1) they may/may not agree to a recount and 2) I still don’t see where they are recounted by more than 1 person.
I’ve been looking for an “official website” in the UK that lists both the original count and recount(s) numbers, but can’t seem to find one (sorry about that). The closest I could find is on en.wikipedia.org about a Dec 1910 election (on that page under “General election December 1910: West Bromwich”) - again, sorry I couldn’t get a direct link to it.
My point is that the numbers change each time you count them. When you have far too many people (in “certain countries”) claiming “It’s all rigged! There is a ‘deep state’ controlling it! The numbers changing ‘prove it’!, etc”; I don’t really see how you are going to make it more accurate than machine counting.
As a side note: When the “Cyber Ninjas” recounted the 2020 Arizona votes they came up with a different number that the official machine counted total - which only showed that the original/officially declared winner won by MORE VOTES than the second place candidate (even though it was the second place candidate’s party that claimed the original count was wrong www.cnbc.com).
I’m glad I vote on paper here, but it’s still read by a black box scanning machine so I have no idea what happens in there. But, I’d have no idea what happens anywhere after I turn in my ballot.
We’ll need to depend on the state election officials to hold the line, and call for a new election if the they find the machines are compromised.
If we didn’t insist on knowing the results as quickly as possible we could just use paper ballots and take a couple weeks to count them.
It’s quite possible to use paper ballots and still get the results quickly. Many countries do this.
The “secret” to both quick and accurate counting is to use machine counting - not counting by humans.
Want to prove it to yourself? Here’s a simple test to perform:
Bet you won’t come up with 500. Count them again; again, I bet you won’t come up with 500 and I bet you won’t come up with the same number as the first time you counted them.
Dude you split the 500 pack into sheets of 10 and lay them crosswise over each other. You haven’t ever done this, have you?
Or even faster, visually split them into 5 stacks of 100. Assumes constant thickness, but then make them even by moving pages from the highest ones to the lowest ones until they are all identical. If you can’t make them all identical, then you don’t have 500.
Then split one of the 100s into 5 again the same way.
Then pick up one of the stacks of 20 and count it to confirm it is 20.
Or for an arbitrary number of sheets, do the same but then set aside any sheets that won’t even up (because the stack isn’t an even multiple of whatever number you divide it into). Then you just have to count the final stack, multiply that to compensate for the splitting (for that layer), add the set aside sheets (for that layer), then move on to the previous layer of splitting and repeat.
Or, count out 20 sheets, then measure their thickness, then measure the thickness of the entire stack, divide by the 20 thickness, multiply by 20, though this one will have some error due to the measurements not being exact (even if you use calipers, paper does compress a bit, which complicates exact measurements).
So, placing them in stacks of 10 fixes it all?
Let’s see, Pennsylvania had ~5,000,000 votes cast in 2022 per ballotpedia.org for senator. That would mean ~500,000 stacks of 10.
You’re sure everyone of them has exactly 10 sheets; not 9 or 11 or 8 even? They never get knocked off the table, mixed up, etc?
And remember, all parties need to count all of the ballots independently from each other - can’t trust a party to count their own candidates ballots ;-). And I’m certain we want every party to come up with the exact same count for each candidate.
Looks like (from the same reference above), that there were 7 candidates running for senator in that election. Five of which received any votes (guess the 2 write-in candidates didn’t even vote for themselves 🤷). So that’s 5M x 7 counts = 35M ballots to count . . . by hand . . . for just one mid-sized state.
And also, there is almost always more than one race on a ballot (I usually see more like 10+ on mine). So, are you going to count them once (in stacks of 10) - tallying 10+ races per ballot? Or do you plan to count them 10+ times (once for each race)?
With all due respect, I can’t see that being in any way practical even given an army of very careful people with multiple months of time.
It most certainly can, and did so until the advent of electronic voting.
The trick is production line counting: multiple people (3 - 5) count every single vote, while each counter has a watcher, handing each ballot off to the next counter for verification in production line style, and others all watch the room and everything in it. All political parties are represented; all watchers and counters are observed and switched up; everyone in the room has both the right and the responsibility to speak up about any anomaly, and they do.
Even when electronic counting gets fucked up, like in Palm Beach County in 2000, manual counting was still used. Remember butterfly ballots and hanging chads? The counting rooms in Palm Beach County worked every ballot in exactly this way, and at the time, night after night, the evening news was full of videos of watching them do it.
I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it is absolutely possible and even common to manually count ballots rapidly in such a way that not a single vote gets missed. We did it for over two hundred years in the US, and that’s how it was in the 90s before electronic counting became a thing.
All you’re really telling the rest of us is that you don’t know the history or the mechanics of voting.
Most countries hand-count paper ballots.
It can be made accurate, with the right checks and balances. And that’s what most countries do. You can’t argue it’s impossible, because it’s done all the time.
The link below lists some of the systems countries use to ensure election integrity and accurate counts. Some of these are only available if you use paper ballots and count by hand.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221114152441/https%3A%2F%2Faceproject.org%2Fabout-en%2FCDTable%3Fquestion%3DVC005%26set_language%3Den
I’m not arguing it can’t be done - provided you are dealing with reasonable and logical people.
What I’m (trying) to say is: It can’t be done (at scale) perfectly - which is what unreasonable and illogical people demand.
And, unfortunately, the latter is what far too many people in “certain countries” seem to be demanding lately.
deleted by creator
A whole lot of countries make it work:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221114152441/https%3A%2F%2Faceproject.org%2Fabout-en%2FCDTable%3Fquestion%3DVC005%26set_language%3Den
I tried to pick one of the largest population countries I could from the lists on that site - I chose the UK for this example.
Well, according to this website www.electoralcommission.org.uk, which appears to be the official government website for such things in the UK. I don’t see where more than 1 person counts each ballot.
Also, this page www.electoralcommission.org.uk seems to say: 1) they may/may not agree to a recount and 2) I still don’t see where they are recounted by more than 1 person.
I’ve been looking for an “official website” in the UK that lists both the original count and recount(s) numbers, but can’t seem to find one (sorry about that). The closest I could find is on en.wikipedia.org about a Dec 1910 election (on that page under “General election December 1910: West Bromwich”) - again, sorry I couldn’t get a direct link to it.
My point is that the numbers change each time you count them. When you have far too many people (in “certain countries”) claiming “It’s all rigged! There is a ‘deep state’ controlling it! The numbers changing ‘prove it’!, etc”; I don’t really see how you are going to make it more accurate than machine counting.
As a side note: When the “Cyber Ninjas” recounted the 2020 Arizona votes they came up with a different number that the official machine counted total - which only showed that the original/officially declared winner won by MORE VOTES than the second place candidate (even though it was the second place candidate’s party that claimed the original count was wrong www.cnbc.com).
As another demonstration, Just about every bank i’ve been to dispenses bills by way of an automatic counting machine.