A story on why one Texas County is looking at hand-counting of ballots as a recipe for disaster

@SoDakCampaigns

Came across this story via Reddit on why the pipe dreams of a hand count by election truthers are delusional that provides interesting food for thought:

“Hand-counting is a recipe for disaster,” said Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University and election administration expert. He and most other experts agree on this, and studies back them up: The method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines to tally votes.

and..

But party official David Treibs, a precinct chair who’s been leading the hand-count planning, doesn’t think it will be much of a hassle.

“It’s not anything that’s really complicated. If you go ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5’ then you can do it,” Treibs, who has no experience hand-counting ballots, told Votebeat. “So it’s not like calculus, you know? If you have a good attention span, then I think most people can do it.”

and..

“Imagine being asked to count the number of sheets in a large ream of paper, the kind you get from Staples,” he said. Mistakes aren’t allowed, nor are programs like Excel. Plus, “You have to do it 80 times, because there are 40 contests with 2 candidates each.”

Adida said he understands why hand-counting sounds easy, but once you’ve done it, you quickly realize it’s a daunting process with dozens of steps.

Read the entire story here.

Don’t forget South Dakota’s experience with counting in 2022. In Tripp county where they tried it? They couldn’t catch their human-error mistake until it was caught by a machine tabulator.

44 thoughts on “A story on why one Texas County is looking at hand-counting of ballots as a recipe for disaster”

  1. The likelihood that an empowered group of financially vested interests will sabotage a hand count effort is very high.

    So, have to stay the course over several elections to install and refine a system that can be validated.

    Any argument that machines are more accurate assumes the premise that machines are not hack-able.

    Of course, that’s laughable.

    They are hack-able by design.

    So hand counting (even if just in an audit phase) is required for county Auditors to fulfill their oaths.

    The machines should never be used in voting scenarios.

    And the folks need good fulfilling jobs, anyway.

    1. THE MACHINES ARE NOT HACKABLE. Please, John, if you don’t understand modern tech, don’t make it our problem. Tabulators don’t have bias, tabulators don’t get tired and make mistakes after working a grueling 12 hour day, tabulators don’t make mistakes, they CATCH mistakes.
      “The likelihood that an empowered group of financially vested interests will sabotage a hand count effort is very high.”
      – this is why nobody takes you Trumpsters seriously anymore, you keep coming up with your own hairbrain conspiracies off-the-cuff with zero evidence to support it.

      “So, have to stay the course over several elections to install and refine a system that can be validated.”
      – this is what we are doing with the tabulators! It IS a refined system and it IS validated! You can’t refine humanity, but you can refine your tools and equipment.

      “Any argument that machines are more accurate assumes the premise that machines are not hack-able.”
      – Go hack into your toaster John, you’d have better luck than one of our vote tabulators, matter of fact why don’t you go “hack” into your own home computer? Do you even understand what it means to hack into a computer, John?

      “Of course, that’s laughable”
      – Finally, we agree.

      “They are hack-able by design.”
      Blatantly untrue, they don’t even connect to the internet. You don’t know what hacking means, John.

      “So hand counting (even if just in an audit phase) is required for county Auditors to fulfill their oaths.”
      – What oath was that, John? “I solemnly swear to devote myself to wasting as much time possible counting ballots when we’re in the year 2023 and we have machines that can do it 200x faster.”

      “The machines should never be used in voting scenarios.”
      – Do you even know what a tabulator does?

      “And the folks need good fulfilling jobs, anyway.”
      – On the county’s dime?? Do you think people are clamouring at the docks with hats in hand begging to be pollworkers, John? No county can find the proper staffing or afford the extra overages. WE ALREADY BOUGHT THE MACHINES, JOHN. THE MACHINES ARE BETTER, JOHN. I mean, how can you read half the comments online (like yours) and think, “Yeah, I’d rather this guy count my vote than a machine designed to do so.”

      Your ignorance is absurd and maddening.

    2. Lay off the weed bro. Watching too many Sci Fi movies too and not realizing they are fantasy.

  2. There is a method by which ballots can be counted in their entirety and verified.

    Anyone using a process like the one described above should 1) not have been in a position to design the count or 2) was intentionally making it painful.

  3. From all I have seen and heard, South Dakota does it right.
    Paper Ballots that can be kept and verified and IF NEED to recount or if needed to hand counted.
    Machine Counting the ballots as the first order of business.

    So long as a paper trail is maintained, we can insure election integrity.

  4. it’s silly that this is a thing. i guess it’s a logical extrapolation to voting, for people who think the federal budget should work like their personal checking account works. more complex. sorry.

  5. There is no problem. The differences in hand counting and tabulators is a handful of votes, if that. We see this time after time in recounts. The differences are miniscule. Meanwhile Republican candidates are winning elections by huge margins, 60-70 percent. We have not had majorities like this since the days of Harlan Bushfield and Sigird Anderson. What’s the problem???

    1. Problem is that those who cling to election trutherism do so out of a need for power. They want to be in charge, so they create a conspiracy that only they can magically solve.

      1. So true. When they lose an election, “it can’t be me”, it must be cheating…in South Dakota? What a joke. So far, I have yet to want to vote for one of these clowns, nor do I know anyone who would. They are losers who need to blame someone else. If they want to address a real and not imagined cheating problem, they need to go to Philadelphia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia and New Jersey, but they would rather sit in SD, whine and irritate the rest of us.

      2. Best Example: Rick Weible

        The guy was on the Board of Directors for the MNGOP during the Coleman v. Franken suit, but only became an “election expert” when it was politically beneficial to him.

      3. Exactly correct Anthony. My dad was Sen Case’s aide and worked Sen Bottom’s 1962 campaign after Case died. Statewide recount took six weeks, both parties hired lawyers in every county along with an army of volunteers. Final tally changed by about 3 votes, McGovern winning by 590-something.

        We run free and fair elections in this state, always have. These truthers are full of it.

  6. All of this nonsense because Orange Jesus ran a lackluster campaign in 2020 (ex. reduced campaign stops in AZ & NV to avoid red-eye flights) and can’t accept the fact he lost to a guy even worse than him.

  7. John Dale is correct. The question is not that the machine can do it better and faster, if there is not a glitch with the hardware or software. The question who do you trust more, fellow community members counting the votes or a machine, the machines maker, the machine vender, the machines technician, the soft wares maker, the soft wares vender, the software technician etc. Who in the local government can look at the computer code and that it is correct (NONE)? And yes then there are the hackers. You say that is not possible? Look at all the huge companies that spend much more money on their IT systems then the state of SD and have been hacked.

    1. It’s not possible to hack them because of their inherent design. They have no remote connection, no way to access them from the outside. Just because it is a machine doesn’t mean that it’s “hackable”. Comparing corporate infosec spending to tabulator security is a complete non-sequitur.

      1. You can repeat it all you want and it does not make it so. All a hacker needs is a IT administrator that thinks his/her system is not able to be hacked. With all that being said there is a large part of the population that does not trust the electronic system and they have a right to demand hand counting.

        1. RD must stand for really dense because you keep making the ill informed assumption that the voting machines are remotely hackable. Guess what. If the machines were hackable Ol Pillow Boy would have proven it but no. Almost four years later and not a damn shred of evidence. You blather on about rights, well why about our right to be free from such nonsense or stupidity.

        2. jewelry stores have a mission to make themselves secure. they choose tested security systems. i’m here to tell you today, anyone with a ninja suit and their ACME glass cutter and hair spray to reveal the laser beams can take all the jewels. rather than prove it with a ninja suit, glass cutter and AquaNet, i am urging owners to draft a cadre of volunteer jewelry owners to form a humam guard at all access points because, well, humans are better than cams, motion sensors, laser tripwires and alarms. because, LOGIC! think it through. sheesh.

        3. IT has nothing to do with the tabulation machines. Like some one else said. I don’t call IT to fix the office toaster or paper shredder.. I audited several tabulation machines across this state by running a batch of marked ballots through. The machines are solid. The machines aren’t connected to the internet. They don’t have secret hidden modems…

          Reading this stuff is like watching the commercial of old ladies posting things on the wall at home.. that’s not how it works, that’s not how any of this works..

    2. If my fellow community members are people like Leah Anderson, John Dale and you, then I’m taking the machines 100% of the time.

      1. It is your right to trust some programmer or hardware engineer is some cubical most likely in another country. It is not for me.

          1. I am not asking you to trust me. I am asking you to think about and trust nobody. Make them show you.

  8. Voting machines are not hackable once they leave the manufacturer.
    QA tests can be run to make sure they are working properly.
    paper ballots can be counterfeit.

  9. There is zero debate that our machines do a better job that individuals counting after working a 12 hour day at the polls. Anybody that says otherwise is completely uninformed about the process. Every person that has been through a recount could explain it to those who care to understand
    Quit trying to inject fraud and instability into a great system. Yes. That means Weeble wobble needs to be tossed in the trash can of irrelevancy. Send him back to Minnesota

    1. As my grandmother used to say “Be careful what you wish for! ” All these years of divisive rhetoric, culture wars and especially anti-mask, anti-vaxx and other conspiracies campaigned on has attracted freedumb seekers to South Dakota. Governor Noem has helped brand the state as a “Freedumb Sanctuary.”

    2. That is not the major question. Machines can do a better job if they are not manipulated. The major question is can the machines be manipulated? The question who do you trust more, fellow community members counting the votes or a machine that is controlled by, the machines maker, the machine vender, the machines technician, the soft wares maker, the soft wares vender, the software technician etc.These are people who could manipulate the machines.Unless machined are in a faraday cage I am still concerned about hacking. Have a Good Christmas.

    3. senator you are correct. while many worry about a computer nerd hiding in venezuela opening 50 sneaky back doors and inserting all manner of skewery into the tabulations, i am much more discomforted imagining a roomful of maga vote count volunteers churning through a pile of ballots where their opponents, poised to end democracy as we know it for ourselves and our posterity, these opponents appear to be winning 65/35 which is a more likely dangerous scenario.

      1. Do not trust MAGA get you and your friends to work at the polls.I trust you counting ballots over a machine.

    4. The election counters do not work all day. They are a separate group of people. The Poll workers finish up after the polls close and then fresh Election counters come in to count the ballots.

      1. Your fact check deviates from mine only in the number of POTUS votes cast. You have an even larger number, which means the percentage of participanting voters was even greater than the 92 percent I arrived at.
        92 percent is a whooping big percentage, if you care to notice. There’s never been anything like it, not even close.
        I’m hoping that DJT can get 84 million votes in 2024; if he still gets beat then, it might appear suspicious even to Trump derangement sufferers.

        1. it could signal a decade long trend where likely voters are increasingly the only people even bothering to register.

          1. Say again? Yes, voters must register; is that your explanation for the enhanced numbers? How often do you hear it said that we had a turnout in the +90 percentile in 2020? Do you have any predictions that it will happen again this coming November?

  12. I don’t understand why there is suddenly a problem in South Dakota where some rogue county official(s) think ballots need to be counted by hand.

    It already takes way too long for Minnehaha to tally. I don’t understand why each precinct isn’t fitted for an automatic tabulator there. Take a look our neighbors in Lyon County, IA. Granted it’s smaller in population but a lesson could be learned from them.

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