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.
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.
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