A GOP primary in Texas has sparked concerns over attempts to move away from electronic ballots.
Republican efforts to hand count ballots in a seemingly low-profile Texas county primary election has led to a number of errors.
Gillespie County Republicans, led by Chairman Bruce Campbell, decided months ago to hand-count more than 8,000 ballots for the county GOP primary on March 5. Campbell then declared the results completely accurate and certified before, less than an hour after that certification, reversing course and saying discrepancies were found.
"It's my mistake for not catching that," Cambell said on Thursday while sitting inside the county election administration office. "I can't believe I did that."
The kerfuffle over ballot counting comes after a November rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump was solidified in primaries last week.
Chairman Bruce Campbell shouted "Hail to the king, baby!" before kicking over the entire container of 8000 ballots, forcing another recount because he suspected demonic influence on the election results.
When asked if he counted the votes exactly he shrugged and said "look, maybe I didn't count every single little tiny ballot, but basically yeah, I counted them."
That's why typically there are other election employees and observers present. Canada's federal elections are tallied by hand count, and results are always (as far as I'm aware) certified the same day. Canada's population is about 40 million people, so not quite the US's 330+ million, but a lot more than this town's 8000.
Spain also hand counts.
At each poll station there are three citizens recruited at random (sort of like jury duty) who run each ballot box. They check voter's credentials and cross off names from the list. The process is overseen by each parties appointed "overseers". The whole counting process must be validated by all.
I prefer this method. Machines can be tampered with.
That's their goal with the whole Dominion voting machines and crying about mail in voting. It's to weaken our already outdated voting machines/processes and to make it easier to steal elections on their end.
Because they're not trying to fix an issue, it's an excuse to meddle with the election and make things worse so they can sell their "democracy is broken, vote for a strong man" schtick
It's dumb because this is a solved problem. Where I am we have bubble ballots where you mark the box, and the machine scans it and drops it into a box. Hand audits of this technology routinely show discrepancies of literally zero over millions of votes.
This is the part which drives me crazy. The concern trolling over vote counting is so transparent, and all because the worlds stupidest orange clown has managed to inject that stupid into the brain of every Republican voter.
It's disturbing how little actual information is in the linked article. I'm sure something truly concerning happened, but "more than 8,000 ballots" is literally the only metric provided and then the author just uses the article as an excuse to talk about Mike Lindell and Trump's indictments.
Keep in mind there are roughly 15 to 30 questions on each ballot. If they're manually verifying each answer on each ballot, then it's really easy to make mistakes.
The Republican push for hand-counted ballots has continued to emerge as the party criticizes a number of electronic voting systems, linking them to claims that the 2020 election was stolen via widespread voter fraud.
One of the major proponents of paper ballots is Trump supporter and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has been an outspoken critic of electronic voting machines. He has said he wants U.S. elections to be held using paper ballots.
Broken clock syndrome. You don't have to be a MAGAt to think that paper ballots are more secure than digital ones.
It isn't the paper ballots that are the problem, it's the hand counting. Many states use paper ballots which are then counted by electronic tallying machines. This method gives results quickly and has the paper ballots to be counted manually if there are discrepancies. Hand counting is slower, less accurate, and just as vulnerable to malicious actors.
Well I mean when you defund education often and long enough, counting is bound to be cut from the curriculum eventually. I mean why teach those toddlers to count when you could instead be teaching them how to make the bootstraps they'll need to pull themselves up with once they hit age 10?
Well yeah, anyone who’s had a job dealing with any amount of counting knows that machine counts are inaccurate but nothing compares to the inaccuracy of hand counting details