Thanks for starting this thread. To me this is where the true peril lies.
I don’t know how hand-counting is done exactly, but it seems you’d need to have counters counting the counters, or, presumably, multiple people all assigned to count the same batch of ballots and they must come out similarly with similar tallies. Otherwise, what if Amy the Vote-Counter, sitting in a corner by herself counting ballots, announces, “619 votes for Trump and 487 votes for Harris” when in fact it was nothing of the sort and Harris had gotten more votes than Trump?
But another problem is that any time you have a huge number of ballots and hand-count them, there is bound to be a discrepancy of one or a few each time. The Republican Party in Georgia could claim that these discrepancies need to be resolved even if they are so tiny that they have no bearing on the actual overall election outcome.
It appears that the Georgia “Hand count” is actually just counting the number of ballots cast, and comparing that count to the machine count. So, it’s not as bad as it seems, but IMO it sure is as stupid as it seems.
Here’s the relevant paragraph from the CNN article:
“The new hand-counting rule requires counties to count by hand the number of ballots cast at a polling place, to make sure it matches the number of ballots tallied by voting machines. The hand-counters won’t be tallying how many votes each candidate received — that’s what the machines do.”
It is.
As someone who was an elections worker for many years, my opinion is that this is a solution in search of a problem – or one looking to create a problem.
The machine counters are highly accurate and have been for decades. Most places do spot hand counts as a double-check to ensure the machines are working properly. We never caught one malfunctioning.
Honestly, while it would be better for the country if every state did some sort of split allocation, it’s amazing that Nebraska’s system has lasted as long as it has, and it’s hard to fault them for switching to the same system 48 other states use.
That still leaves plenty of room for shenanigans, though. All you need is for the elections officials to watch the exit polls, and if Harris is going to win, oh, it’s too bad that we can’t finish counting in time, I guess we’ll just have to abstain, and if Trump was going to win, well, I guess that hand-counting EVERYTHING was unrealistic, so let’s just scan them to meet the deadline.
If they were to do this, and so did Maine, I really wouldn’t have a problem.
On the other hand, I assume it would be even better if every state instead swapped to the model Nebraska and Maine use, and divvy their electoral votes proportionately. Then we’d have a system closer to a real democracy, where the popular vote and electoral result resemble each other better, and we’re unlikely to see results where a person wins the presidency while losing the popular vote by a significant margin (greater than a percent).
It wouldn’t be perfect; you’d still be giving a disproportionate amount of weight to states with a lesser population, but I think it would still be closer to a real democracy.
That’s probably a subject worthy of its own thread.
(Replying to something else upthread) The other problem that comes to mind is that there doesn’t seem to be any remedy if indeed someone is willing to be a team player and take the metaphorical bullet for Trump.
All the law does is deter people from election fraud but there seems to be no remedy once it has occurred. Suppose one or a few Trump-supporting election officials in Georgia collect all the ballots from a precinct and burn them. They’d go to prison of course, but the law doesn’t seem to afford Harris any remedy once it’s happened. Georgia GOP officials (who weren’t connected to the crime) could say, “Well, there are blatant shenanigans in this election and we refuse to certify Georgia and its slate of EVs.” And once the deadline for certification passes, it passes.
We ARE using the same system, the electoral college. Maine does it the same way we do. Good luck telling them what to do. I’ll stand back and hold your beer.
The time is long past due to get rid of the electoral college. If we are going to go to a winner-take-all-system, let’s ditch the electoral college mess and let the winner of the popular vote take all. Til then, leave Maine and Nebraska to their method of choice.
[I’m from Nebraska of course. It is already bad enough what the bought and sold by big money Republicans are doing]:
You’re not taking Gerrymandering into account. A state like OH could go 50-50 but its congressional delegation be 10-5 (which is what it is). There are worse states for this.
And then about 15 minutes later a judge would order them to certify it. No state has failed to appoint electors since Reconstruction and it would be an extreme violation of the public’s rights under the 14th amendment. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying it’s not gonna happen.
Same here. Correct.
As you said, we already cross-check (“reconcile”) the numbers VERY CAREFULLY throughout the day, and again at the end of the day, by comparing: 1. the machine count to the 2. number of ballots handed out when the voter signs in to 3. the number of voters having voted according to the number of signatures in the poll books.
(In our state, #1 also includes the absentee ballots, since we have to process them during the course of that day, so there’s always a little easy addition involved.)
I’m sure all polling location do similar things throughout the US.
In the last seven elections, we’ve only had a very minor issue once, resolved within minutes, in the middle of the day (a handful of absentee ballots had been delivered to the wrong ward).
The problem is Nebraska and Maine do not divvy them up proportionally. Instead they assign 1 electoral vote for each Congressional district won (plus two for whoever wins the state overall). Given the horrible Gerrymandering we have, this would not be a good idea.
Yep. It would be essentially like letting the House vote, as each Congressional district would likely vote for the same party for Representative and for President. Except, each state would also get two extra Senatorial votes based on the popular vote winner of that state.
Without Gerrymandered districts, it would likely be more representative of the popular vote, but as we will never get rid of Gerrymandering, it won’t.
Thanks for the info and clarification peeps.
I should assume that this error was probably just bad coding, and it was caught almost immediately. But still.
When Max Himsl opened his electronic ballot on Friday, he was dismayed to see a candidate missing from the list of options.
Voting absentee electronically while living abroad, Himsl saw that under the options for president, only Republican Donald Trump and Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were listed. Missing was Democrat Kamala Harris.
Programmer here. Considering the importance, consternation and focus this election has, that could NOT have been a mistake. Unless of course DJT is hiring programmers.
While we’re all using the same electoral college, the states differ in how to choose those electors, with 48 states all doing it almost the same way, and (currently) 2 states doing it a different way.
And for the record, I have a lot of respect for Nebraska, for doing what they do. It would be very easy for them to set up their elector selection method to work the same way as most of the country, and also very easy for them to gerrymander the state such that even with their current system, they’d never cast an electoral vote for a Democrat. Instead, they choose (at least for now) to have a system that at least has a chance of representing dissenting voices, and their district lines are nearly identical to what you’d get from an impartial algorithm. That, I think, shows some level of integrity.
Unless one party has an unassailable majority (in which case they don’t need to bother with gerrymandering), the gerrymandering process necessarily involves packing the other party’s voters into a small number of districts, so it always concedes a few districts (but fewer than the other party would win if the results reflected the percentage of voters on each side).
SCOTUS didnt make that choice. The court simply stopped more recounts-- and who is to say Gore would have won those? In fact, most people think Gore was likely to lose such recounts- but note that word “likely”. (in other words, Gore had a small but significant chance of winning, but by no means was it a sure thing)
In brief, the breakdown of the decision was:
** Five justices agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using differing standards of determining a valid vote in different counties, causing an “unequal evaluation of ballots in various respects”.[34] The per curiam opinion (representing the views of Justices Kennedy, O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas) specifically cited that:*
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- Palm Beach County changed standards for counting dimpled chads several times during the counting process;*
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- Broward County used less restrictive standards than Palm Beach County;*
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- Miami-Dade County’s recount of rejected ballots did not include all precincts;*
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- The Florida Supreme Court did not specify who would recount the ballots.*
** The per curiam opinion also identified an inconsistency with the fact that the Florida statewide recount of rejected ballots was limited to undervotes. The opinion implied that a constitutionally valid recount would include Florida’s overvotes, not just its undervotes. The opinion expressed concern that the limited scope of Florida’s recount would mean that, unlike some undervotes found to be reclaimable, valid votes among the overvotes would not be reclaimed.[a] Furthermore, if a machine had incorrectly read an overvote as a valid vote for one of two marked candidates instead of rejecting it, Florida would wrongly count what should be an invalid vote.[b]*
- The Florida Supreme Court did not specify who would recount the ballots.*
And in fact when trump went to SCOTUS to get 2020 overturned, they laughed him out of the courtroom, as also occurred in just about every court did- including Judges he had picked.
Yep, in 2004 Bush got more votes than Kerry- flat out by 3 million. In fact the only recent elections where the Republican lost the popular vote (but still won) was trump in 2016, and Bush/Gore in 2000.
Indeed but now they are trying to change it at the 11th hour to a worse system in order to advantage one party. No more integrity.
At the least I would suggest changes like this should be made long before an election and not when one is less than two months away. There should be a moratorium on election law changes within (say) eight months of an election. They can pass the law but it can’t take effect till after any election within eight months. (a guy can dream)