RE: Hand counting ballots

["Paul Tiger" <tigerp@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Better idea. You do the hand count, leave me out of it. It will never work.
You want an experiment? We can set one up. this is not counting slips of
paper, this is counting blotches on hundreds of thousands of pieces of
paper. I bet you that you can't do it. You will come up with different
totals every time. When you get close to the end and see that it isn't going
to work out, you will lie to yourself and others about the upcoming total.

Supervise all you want. It can't be done.
Oh yeah, its against the law too.

paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Ralph Shnelvar [mailto:ralphs@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 3:28 PM
To: BCV
Subject: Re: Hand counting ballots

Dear Paul:

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:29:21 -0700, you wrote:

>An interesting concept, since it has checks and balances. However, hand
>counting of ballots has always proven to be suspect and open to fraud. Get
>ten people to count the ballots, get ten totals. Is it fraud or is it human
>error?
>Now add the DRE count and then the scanned count. Which one do the
elections
>officials choose? Averaging is not permitted.
>
>Go thunk on that.

You choose the hand count.  It is as simple as that.

If the election is close and/or if there are big discrepancies between the
hand count and the machine counts then you do a more careful and supervised
hand count.

_Something_ has to trump and I prefer hand counting.

>
>Paul Tiger

Ralph