Voters: Count Ballots by Hand

[Wilms]

Voters: Count ballots by hand

Petition article to prohibit computerized vote counting passes

By Nick Martin
Monadnock Ledger-Transcript

LYNDEBOROUGH — By approving a petition warrant article at Saturday’s Town Meeting, Lyndeborough voters made their town perhaps the first in the nation to formally prohibit computerized vote counting and ensure the tradition of hand counting paper ballots.

Voters approved the petition article that “prohibits vote counting concealed from human eye by method of computers.” Resident Nancy Tobi, who sponsored the petition article, said she brought the article to the town to ensure Lyndeborough would continue to count its ballots by hand, as it has for more than 200 years.

snip

“The decision to use an optical scan counting machine is up to the town. Every ballot is still cast on paper,” Scanlan said on Wednesday.

http://www.ledgertranscript.com/article/voters-count-ballots-by-hand

[PDJane]

1. We do.

hand counted, open process, carefully supervised........and the results come before midnight in most places.

It works.

[AtLiberty]

2. A better way to frame this issue...

...is *not* to demand hand-counted paper ballots. There are always arguments against them. Ballots tossed in the river stories... Ballots found in a box in the back room stories... You've heard 'em.

The way to frame this is to demand a 100 percent transparent electoral process. When asked what process is acceptable, just repeat, "Anything that is 100 percent transparent is acceptable." Of course, the only one that meets that criteria is hand-counted paper ballots. It's a way of saying exactly what you want without dealing with the usual comments. It's also a way to highlight that we don't have transparent voting process in place.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. it is less complex

but admittedly even New Hampshire's general election ballots are much simpler than the rest
of the country's.

NH recently eliminated straight ticket voting and that may increase time to count votes a bit.

In a presidential election, NH ballot has about 12 contests on it.

[Wilms]

5. "...the rest of the country..."?

How about "a lot of other places, but certainly not all..."?

If the election is such that it can be hand-counted, it's of value to consider doing so.

[diva77]

6. what sort of election can't be hand-counted??

:shrug:

[Wilms]

7. Exactly. n/t

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

8. watch the video of the meeting

VIDEO: Lyndeborough bans computerized voting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXOg3OZfGpw

Nancy Tobi advises that having a simpler ballot makes it more feasible to HCPB in New Hampshire.
She says that a jurisidiction would want to reduce the number of contests in one election in order
to have a simpler ballot.

In 2004 in North Carolina, we had a few HCPB counties, and as our ballot is quite long, (24 contests) they ended up finishing the count the next day.

In California, often a GE ballot may have several pages of contests.

The issue is that politicians like to have their contests on big ballots.

So in NH there were fewer obstacles to over come.

Remember, while it is very important to count votes publicly and accurately, it is
also important to count them promptly.

You have to address all issues, and you have to be able to either get such a charter passed or
otherwise build momentum for such a change,

[Clyde39]

4. We KNOW we can't trust the machines

So this is the obvious answer.