Capitals below are for emphsis, not yelling.
Please site (i.e. reference) where 100,000+ votes were manually counted MULTIPLE TIMES for MULTIPLE RACES ON THE SAME BALLOTS, and the results for ALL canditates were EXACTLY the same for each count.
Also: I’m NOT SAYING that either machine and/or manually counting is not “exact enought” - I FULLY believe it is and has been for decades/centuries.
Elephant seal.
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.
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).
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.
That’s why:
The proper course of action in the above case would be to alert the pole workers to the problem and they should then remove the defective equipment from use until it is properly calibrated and certified accurate. Which it should have been before being placed in service originally.
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.
Sir, the Scots would like a word with you - in private.
I thought it was The Peoples Front of Judea!
I can hear the strongly worded letter being typed up now!
YOU are the one that ass-u-med the 100,000,+ had to be at one location - I never said that.
So you are just giving up your point it seems. I very well know of Palm Beach County, FL. Yes, they counted multiple times.
My point was never about “how the chads hang” - that’s an entirely different issue. The accuracy of the counting is what I am talking about. You can’t give a reference for that because such a reference doesn’t exist (that is to say, a reference that shows a substantial number of votes counted multiple times when the counts are the same each time).