Re: Hand counting ballots

[Ralph Shnelvar <ralphs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Paul:

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:39:46 -0700, you wrote:

>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.

Hmm, let's see (Off the top of my head)
	Canada
	Great Britain
	and most of the other 30 member countries of the OECD
count (or recently counted)  ballots by hand.

Geez, I guess it can't be done.

>Oh yeah, its against the law too.

What law?  HAVA?  According to the U.S. DOJ, HAVA only applies to federal
elections (http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/hava/tx_ltr.htm).

In any event, the law needs to be changed.

>
>paul

Ralph Shnelvar

>
>-----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
>